> Who is the dictator here?

I’d say the leader of the executive branch who is unconstitutionally restricting (without an act of Congress) money that Congress lawfully appropriated, thereby seizing most of the power of the purse.

The dictator is still in the oven, but it's nearly ready. Just needs a topping of constitutional crisis and a suspension of elections and it'll be done.

You don't need to suspend elections you just need to subvert them. For-show elections make good dictatorial theater.

Yeah, I was going to say that the most likely thing is "making the voting process more secure and reliable to make sure elections are fair" by setting up voting machines and counting processes run entirely by loyalists, but that's less punchy and didn't fit the metaphor.

The constitutional crisis was Trump's pardon of Joe Arpaio's contempt of court.

If the president can pardon contempt, then the president has the power to exempt a person from the obligation to show up in court, admit guilt, or experience consequences for their crime.

That was the moment of structural executive supremacy and an actual constitutional crisis -- when the law contradicts itself calling the laws themselves into question.