Well before he dipped his toe into politics, Donald Trump made a habit of praising certain world leaders. “I think [Vladimir Putin] has done really a great job of outsmarting our country,” Trump said during a 2013 interview, going on to offer public praise for the Russian president at several other points that year. His list of role models has since grown to include Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey; even Trump’s criticism of Kim Jong Un comes interspersed with bizarre compliments. And on Monday, while ostensibly pitching the American public on the Republican tax law, the president went off-script in a tirade that hewed uncomfortably close to the rhetoric Trump’s favorite autocrats employ.

After describing Republicans as “going totally crazy wild” over his State of the Union address, Trump expressed his displeasure with the response across the aisle. According to the president, Democratic lawmakers were “like death” and “un-American,” when he discussed “really positive news.” But Trump didn’t stop there. Noting that some had likened the Democrats’ reaction to treason, Trump went all in on the premise: “Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much,” he said.

Of course, declining to ferociously applaud a president—particularly one with an average approval rating hovering around 40 percent—does not qualify as treason. But since he took office last year, Trump has repeatedly tested the boundaries of presidential norms, at times behaving more like a dictator than a democratically elected president. His vision for his inaugural parade, for example, reportedly included military tanks and a 20-plane flyover. He has claimed on record that the president “cannot have a conflict of interest,” while his legal team has insisted that the president “can’t obstruct justice.”

His worrisome habit of demanding loyalty pledges from subordinates; his unrelenting attacks on the free press; and his public frustration over the fact that the Justice Department does not serve as his personal law enforcement agency combine to project an image of Trump as an authoritarian sympathizer. His stunning suggestion that Democratic lawmakers who did not cheer his speech committed treason is simply more of the same.