America on Trial
If Trump walks, we’re all guilty
As another set of serious indictments drops against both Trump and many of his co-conspirators, America is also on trial. Our hopes that America will ever be The land that never has been yet — And yet must be lie bleeding out in the middle of Fifth Avenue, as an exhausted political class rationalizes its learned helplessness by wondering whether anyone really cares.
For example, in the New York Times’ lead analysis of the Georgia indictment, which is headlined, “A Spectacle That Has Become Surreally Routine,” Peter Baker writes that “a country of short attention spans has now seen this three times before and grown oddly accustomed to the spectacle.” As evidence for this, he cites a Republican political consultant, diminished TV ratings after the first indictment, and the idea that “most Americans made up their minds about Mr. Trump long before prosecutors like Fani T. Willis or Jack Smith weighed in, polls have shown.” Meanwhile, pundits continue to wonder aloud whether it’s somehow a step too far to charge Trump based on the overwhelming evidence that he committed many crimes.
That Times article well characterizes the way in which the road to dystopia continues to be paved by the political class’s inevitable normalizing of (or treating as hyperbole) what, were it happening anywhere else in the world, would be properly understood as the actions and intentions of an increasingly powerful fascist movement.
In one sense, we are entering uncharted waters – no president has ever been indicted, and now we have one who already has four indictments and could easily face additional ones – and is the frontrunner for the nomination of his party nonetheless. But in another sense, we aren’t at all.
Repeatedly since at least 2000, we’ve seen what we had presumed to be settled laws and permissible political practices repeatedly violated. And each time, the political class finds a way to minimize the importance of each breach – never stepping back to acknowledge that the breaches have not been isolated actions of this or that politician or official, but deliberate steps in a campaign to radically restore an economic and social order we thought we had left behind. It is as if what happened in the Saarland (1935), Rhineland (1936), Austria and Czechoslovakia (1938), and Poland (1939) were reported as independent events, arising from particular circumstances, without reference to Nazis, Hitler, or plans for a thousand year Reich, or what the stakes were for the rest of the world.
Many have warned us that our democracy was at stake ahead of each breach – yet they tend to be as nonplussed as Siri when we miss a turn after each bright line has been crossed. They recalculate and then tell us that the next breach would be the one to cross the bright line. In that way, they remind us of Neville Chamberlain, who, a year before Germany invaded Poland to begin World War II, exulted that he had secured “peace in our time.”
Broadly, in this post I want to do two things. First, I want to describe what we can expect again from the political class. (By “political class,” I mean the mainstream media, opinionators, non-partisan foundations, and most Democratic politicians. It is difficult to provide media examples without referring to individuals, but I want to be clear that especially at the major media outlets, the decisions about which voices will be heard are made by unnamed editors and publishers.)
Second, I want to take a step back to show how despite the best efforts of the MAGA Republican Party, elected Republicans, and most judicial appointments by recent Republican presidents to convince us otherwise, the political class continues to treat them as legitimate democratic actors entitled to the presumption that each next action will be made in good faith. This post looks at two aspects of that:
(1) what the political class has dismissed over the last three years (and what we can expect them to continue dismissing if nothing changes);
(2) what the political class refuses to acknowledge about the moment we’re in.
What to Expect from the Political Class
Moving the Goalposts for Trump
It is essential for the criminal justice system to hold Donald J. Trump and his co-conspirators (as well as everyone else who broke the law) accountable for their crimes. But we are already in danger of focusing too much on the intricacies of each count of each indictment, the admiring or critiquing of the legal strategies, and most of all the speculation over whether it will all “work” to convict Trump. The danger is that we will forget what we all know and have known for quite some time – that he did it all. We all lived through January 6th; we’ve all heard the Raffensberger tape; we’ve all watched Bill Barr call “bullshit;” we’ve all seen Trump’s tweets. Trump has even bragged about aspects of his crimes and all but promised to pardon all those involved if re-elected. This is the same mistake as after the 2000 election, when coverage quickly made it into a gladiator duel between Bush and Gore’s legal teams, and superstar lawyers with amazing backstories (David Boies is dyslexic!), so that, in the end, the election could be decided by who had better lawyers rather than who received the votes of more Floridians.1
Properly, juries will decide whether to convict Trump of breaking the law. But, unless you believe the Big Lie, you know that he nearly broke democracy, and promises to complete the job if he is re-elected. (Or as George W Bush said, “Fool me once…”)
Jay Rosen has a good example here of what it might look like if the press wrote about this moment with the urgency and clarity it deserves.
Ignoring the “Hell No” Voter
Throughout 2021, pollsters and reporters continuously told us that “January 6th” or “democracy” were not major issues for voters.2 In the last few weeks, the same “calm down” chorus has pointed to more recent polling to discount the importance of the indictments. Inexplicably, they make the same mistake they made then, and which they made with Dobbs with respect to abortion3 – they don’t see that while the share of Americans who think Trump is guilty (or support Roe) is unlikely to change in any seismic way, the extent to which it matters to voters does change. Asking about support for abortion rights in the abstract couldn’t let you anticipate how angry people will be after what had been taken for granted has been taken away.
Ask people in a focus group (as we did repeatedly at the Research Collaborative), or maybe even your family dinner, and you’ll see what I mean. A conversation in 2021 about whether Trump should be held accountable for what he had just done invariably drew nuanced replies. But when the question turned to whether he should be president again, the immediate, and unequivocal response was “hell no.” Kari Lake et al were defeated by the “hell no” vote.
But the savvy class is letting the built-in literalness and predetermined nature of polling cause them to miss the "hell no" voter. Forced-choice issue battery polls allow commentators to believe that the election will be decided by the discrete issues people are selecting in the most recent survey, when, in fact, the election will be decided by the intensity of the revulsion of the anti-MAGA majority. Polls now hide what has become the central dividing line for most Americans: not a single “issue” but the direction of the country. MAGA or not.
In Denial: Attacks on the 2020 Election
Supposedly, “the truth will set you free.” But, in 2023 America, fully acknowledging inconvenient truths would obligate us to take extraordinary measures to save ourselves. And so, rather than the whole truth, what we get from the free press are classic defense mechanisms: denial, avoidance, and intellectualization.
Let’s begin by realizing that without the lethal attack on the Capitol, Trump might not be facing any indictments at all. As the recent indictments and the testimony presented at the January 6th hearings make clear, the deadly assault on the Capitol was one of the least likely elements to succeed in a far-reaching criminal conspiracy to subvert the law and overthrow the election. Yet, given how quickly after the second impeachment the political class wanted to put the whole thing behind them, it’s impossible to imagine that any of that would have ever come to light, or that Trump and his co-conspirators would ever be held accountable, if the January 6th insurrection hadn’t happened. And, crucially, even if it had but there had been no January 6th Committee, we would know none of what we do now as the media had moved on, and key witnesses such as Bill Barr and Cassidy Hutchinson would have never come forward.
Now, let’s look at the ways in which the political class can’t bring itself to acknowledge the complicity of the Republican Party as a whole.
Without Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and other Republican leaders, January 6th would likely have been no worse than an angry protest rally.
On December 19, 2020, Trump tweeted “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild.” But on January 2, 2021, by dramatically announcing that they would be challenging the Electoral College outcome, Senators Cruz, Johnson, Lankford, Daines, Kennedy, Blackburn, and Braun, and Senators-elect Lummis, Marshall, Hagerty and Tuberville, altered the meaning of January 6th. Especially in what they said outside of the mainstream media (on Fox et al, as well as in social media and fundraising appeals), they created the illusion that coming to Washington on January 6th could actually overturn the results of the 2020 elections.
In the fantasy world these Republicans breathed life into, those coming to Washington could easily imagine that they would soon be seen as patriotic heroes. Without that permission structure, it’s easy to imagine January 6th looking more like the sparsely-attended protests outside courthouses this year following each new Trump indictment. Read the accounts of the trials of those arrested for their activities on January 6th, and you realize they believed they were there to make history. They did not come simply to vent, “protest," or show their solidarity with Trump; they intended to literally take back their country.
Kevin McCarthy is the first Speaker of the House in United States history to stand behind a twice-impeached, four-times-indicted president.
McCarthy has accused Biden of “weaponiz[ing] government against his leading political opponent to interfere in the 2024 election,” and Fanni Willis of “following Biden’s lead by attacking President Trump and using it to fundraise her political career.” Perhaps we should introduce him to the other Kevin McCarthy who, shortly after the insurrection, said publicly that Trump “bears responsibility,” and said privately that his conduct was “atrocious and totally wrong.” For that matter, where is the Mitch McConnell who said after voting to acquit Trump in 2021, “There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day,” and that he "didn't get away with anything yet" as he was still criminally liable? The DOJ and Willis are doing exactly what McConnell urged them to do because he thought impeachment was unconstitutional, yet he is staying mum on the topic.
More importantly: Where is the media that never holds either McConnell or McCarthy accountable now for what they said in the immediate aftermath of January 6th?
Republican leaders have never missed an opportunity to miss the opportunity to end Trump.
In How Democracies Die, we are reminded that rising demagogues have been quelled in the past by otherwise unlikely coalitions between opposing establishment party leaders who share a desire to preserve democracy. The election dynamics in the U.S. make it unrealistic to think that Trump could have been stopped in the Republican primaries in 2016. But in the summer of 2016, especially after the Access Hollywood tape, Republican leaders could have followed the example offered by Levitsky and Ziblatt4 of conservative ÖVP leaders in Austria, who, given the choice in the spring of 2016 between presidential candidates Alexander Van der Bellen on the left and Norbert Hofer on the right, opted to join the Social Democrats in endorsing Van der Bellen to avoid an imminent threat from the far-right.
Even in January 2021, despite having full knowledge of the threat Trump presented, the establishment leaders of the GOP opted not to go this route; McConnell could have held the impeachment trial immediately, removing the fig leaf invoked later that an ex-president can’t be impeached. In February 2021, ten more votes would have convicted Trump.
Republicans refuse to accept the legitimacy of elections certified by Republicans.
Unlike elections in most other Western countries run by and certified by independent, non-partisan or governmental officials,5 the legitimacy of American election results rests on predetermined representatives of both parties certifying the results.
The election system here has held up without serious controversy until 2020 because our two parties have statutory roles at every stage of the process.6 They both designate copartisans who are present at the polling places where ballots are cast and where those ballots are counted, as well as for any recounts that may occur; they both generally serve as co-partisan members of the county canvass boards (or equivalent) that approve vote counts; and they both designate copartisans to be on state boards that certify the final results that are, in presidential and senatorial (and often gubernatorial) elections, reflected on the certificate of election that must be signed by the secretary of state and governor.7 And when candidates feel that even all of that is insufficient, they can take their case to courts whose benches are usually (whether by election or appointment) drawn from both parties.
In other words, after all that, for a candidate to claim that the election was stolen from them is to claim that his or her own copartisans, who were designated by or associated with his or her own party, were in on the theft, as was the entire judicial system.8
Thus, anyone, from Trump on down, who claims that the 2020 election was stolen, or who refuses to denounce claims that it was, demonstrates that there is no set of circumstances that will satisfy them that the result of any election they lose is legitimate. We no longer have democratic elections when accepting the results as legitimate is optional.
Trump’s earlier actions to defeat the 2020 election have been flushed down the memory hole.
Even if he hadn’t engaged in a criminal conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as a prospective candidate for president we should be reminded of how he abused his power (when he had it) to undermine the 2020 election before it happened. Indeed, what Dershowitz argued on the floor of the Senate has been the guiding principle of Trump's tenure: “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”
In no particular order, he attempted to extort the assistance of Ukraine and China to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden,9 defunded the election,10 discredited and undermined mail voting during the pandemic,11 undermined the postal service,12 made voter suppression a centerpiece of his campaign (“If we let more people vote, Republicans will never win another election”),13 subverted confidence in the integrity of the election,14 abused executive power,15 and packed the courts.16
In Denial: The Threat of MAGA
For much of the first three years of the Trump Administration, the political class seized on anything it could to tell us that this was the moment “Trump became presidential,” or to reassure that this or that appointment would be the decisive adult in the room.17 Likewise, the political class insisted that every Federalist Society-backed judicial nominee’s commitment to stare decisis be taken in good faith, as if they were not selected because they could be counted on to advance a particular agenda. And so on. Yet, somehow, the political class never acknowledges the obvious:
MAGA Is a Fascist Movement
Describing MAGA as “fascist” is not hyperbole; it is factually accurate. MAGA checks all the boxes of what historians and political scientists generally label as “fascist”:18
Refusing to accept elections as legitimate unless their preferred candidates win;
Encouraging or tolerating violence against political opponents (January 6th and other vigilante actions);
Embracing authoritarianism and extreme nationalism (“America First,” Trump as strongman supreme leader); and
Fearing and loathing difference (white nationalist ideology, xenophobia)
Pushing paranoid grievance narratives about plots to overthrow traditional ways of life (Great Replacement Theory, QAnon, radicalized anti-feminist movements);
Promising a return to a mythical past (literally make America great again).
There is MAGA without Trump, but no Trump without MAGA.
As the media comes to realize that Trump was correct when he said he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and [he] wouldn't lose any voters,” they still don’t understand that he retains that support not because he is so popular, but simply because they (the “fake media”) – and all of us who believe in pluralistic, multiracial democracy – are his target. His supporters have always believed what he has only recently articulated – that he is their justice, he is their vengeance.
Even before Trump descended the escalator, half of America lived in states in which MAGA state legislatures, operating from their gerrymandered bunkers, had already been taking away voting rights, enacting stricter abortion bans, and lashing out at other essential freedoms. At a national level, three quarters of the Republican House Caucus had been elected by the Tea Party backlash. Since Trump arrived, MAGA Republicans have become further entrenched, and have purged nearly every “RINO” who stood up to Trump. That’s because Trump didn’t conjure the fury; he is its logical manifestation. The religious right has not only caught the car – it’s in the driver’s seat. Fox News, right wing media, political churches, et al will continue to do what they’ve been doing, Trump or no Trump – as will Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Coney Barrett. 19
We are still in the middle of a never-acknowledged constitutional coup.
For decades, we’ve discounted, even ridiculed, the coalition made up of 1) plutocrats bent on overturning the New Deal order to regain their Gilded Age glory, and 2) white Christian nationalists bent on restoring their Lord’s order. When Obama was elected in 2008, most of us took that to be the final confirmation that the moral arc of the universe did, indeed, bend toward justice. But this revanchist coalition took it to be the final signal they needed that the terrorists were in the cockpit, the pilots were all dead, and every election thereafter would be a Flight 93 Election.
It can happen, and already is happening, here.
Most of us have been taught throughout our lives that democratic downfalls can happen “over there,” but “it can’t happen here,” because that’s “not who we are,” and “we are better than that.” But in the face of our history, those making this argument show themselves to be bound to a different Big Lie: American Exceptionalism.
The political class’s seemingly unshakable devotion to American exceptionalism prevents it from seeing in America what they can see easily in other countries. In that spirit, imagine that you were told that in a country with a two party system, over the last 13 years one party had:
Made it more difficult for other party’s constituencies to vote by:
Gutting the voting rights laws that had been instrumental in breaking down the system of electoral apartheid doggedly left standing for nearly a century;
Enacting laws and using executive action to limit the number of polling places, drop boxes and hours available for voting in largely Black and Brown precincts;
Purging voter rolls in ways that disproportionately removed voters of color; and
Exploiting partisan gerrymandering through a high court ruling. (SCOTUS)
Stacked the courts by:
Refusing to consider the other party’s nominee to the nation’s high court on the grounds that it should wait for the election of the next president, and then:
Ramming through their own party’s nomination to the high court, weeks before an election they were expected to lose – and when their presidential candidate argued that haste was necessary, as that court might be called on to decide the outcome of the election;
Drawing its judicial nominees from lists of “acceptable” candidates made by interest groups with extreme agendas;
Flooding the judiciary with unqualified ideological fellow travelers to the extent that only about 70% of the judges he appointed had a “well qualified” rating according to the until then relied on non-partisan national bar association.
Undermined the credibility of free and fair elections by:
Continuously repeating the lie that the other party regularly committed fraud, including allowing non-citizen immigrants to vote;
Conducting sham “audits” to sustain doubt in the results of the last presidential election;
Challenging the official national vote count without any evidence of fraud whatsoever;
Advocating for a fantastical theory that insists sitting lawmakers can overrule the votes of their local citizens for president ("independent state legislature" theory); and
Making it easier to overturn the results of elections they lose by enacting laws to shift authority for oversight and certification of elections to entities they control. In 2021, state legislatures in 17 states enacted 32 laws granting themselves authority to “politicize, criminalize, or interfere with elections.”
Moreover, since the 2008 elections, a MAGA Red Curtain has descended on the country at the state level. Consider that in 2008, just 22 percent of Americans lived in a state in which Republicans had trifecta control (control of both chambers of the state legislature and governor) and 29 percent in states in which Republicans controlled both chambers of the state legislature (that 22 percent, plus another 7 percent with Republican controlled legislators and a Democratic governor). In 2020, that had nearly doubled to 41 percent living in states with Republican trifectas and 57 percent living in states in which Republicans controlled both chambers of the state legislature.
With control of state legislatures in those states, MAGA enacted its decidedly authoritarian agenda, including strict voter ID requirements, Right to Work, pre-viability abortion bans, stand your ground laws, and loosed restrictions on guns. Unified MAGA Republican state governments routinely override decisions made locally, as when Kemp banned cities from ordering people to wear face masks. This excellent piece in the Washington Post details how Republican state governments strip power from localities when African Americans gain power in them. And in North Carolina in 2016, and in Michigan and Wisconsin in 2018, MAGA Republican state legislatures used lame duck sessions to strip newly elected Democratic governors of important executive powers.
Knowing all that about another country, could you argue that it hasn’t been happening here for quite a while?
Finally, beyond that there are those who argue that it won’t happen here. Those making this argument are actually skillfully changing the subject; they delay action by shifting the conversation to speculation about whether the disaster will happen. This puts those of us warning about the dangers on the defensive, because of course we can't be certain of the outcome. But we don't refuse to treat a potentially deadly disease until we are certain the patient would actually die from it.
Conclusion: Will We Wake Up In Time?
I’m most struck by the contrast between the moral ambitions and certitude of the Trump years and the defeatism of the last two. In the Trump years, there was a palpable resurgence of moral clarity which reached a crescendo in the George Floyd protests and the national resistance to MAGA. But over the last two and a half years, too many sat on the sidelines reverting to a learned helplessness, more interested in hectoring and second guessing those who remained committed. If the Trump years were characterized by the nation’s greatest readiness to acknowledge its faults, the last two and a half were characterized by backlash – not just by those still determined to “make America great again,” but by a peanut gallery of opinionators who insist we discard our most basic moral commitments as political liabilities.
In reality, the universe has no moral arc – only a thick rope for an eternal tug of war between human freedom and dignity on one side, and fascism, unfettered greed, and inherited caste on the other. If Trump – or another MAGA nominee – wins in November of next year, what we say and do now can and will be used as evidence against us by future generations.
It’s important to remember what the five Republican justices on the Supreme Court did - they stopped the recount already underway which would have established whether Bush or Gore had received more votes. This happened at a time when the Secretary of State, appointed by Bush’s brother and who had just served as Bush’s Florida campaign manager, had Bush with a 500 vote lead.
Dems know the Jan. 6 hearings won’t help in November. They’re leaning in anyway. | Politico (June, 2022) (“All of which lends an air of fatalism to Democrats’ approach to the hearings. They readily acknowledge the election less six months away will be determined far more by voters’ economic worries than last year’s riot.”)
What are Americans thinking about the January 6 hearings? | Brookings (June, 2022) (“Many Americans are following the January 6 committee’s hearings, but few minds are being changed, according to national surveys conducted since the hearings began. Here are five major takeaways from these surveys.”)
Made-for-TV Jan. 6 hearings won’t rescue Democrats | The Hill (June, 2022) (“Americans agree: The January 6 riots were a terrible event, and that those who broke the law should be punished. More and more also agree: It is time to move on.”)
The January 6 Hearings Are Not Going to Save Us | The Nation (August, 2022) (“Even in the court of public opinion, it’s doubtful that the Democrats will achieve anything approaching a significant victory. They’ve been screaming for years that Trump is an erratic, unprincipled, and contemptible person who is manifestly unfit for public office. That was Hillary Clinton’s pitch in the 2016 election, and it was the premise of Mueller’s investigation and both failed impeachments. It didn’t work then, and it’s not going to work now. In fact, the hearings may well increase Trump’s support among his base.”)
Jan. 6 Hearings Have No Impact on Opinion | Monmouth (August, 2022) (“The latest Monmouth (“Mon-muth”) University Poll, though, suggests it hasn’t moved the needle with the American public. In general, public opinion stands pretty much the same as it was before recent headline-grabbing testimony of former presidential aides during the last three public hearings.”)
Americans Are Moving On From Jan. 6 — Even If Congress Hasn't | FiveThirtyEight (April, 2022) (“Moreover, many Americans want to move on from investigating the events of Jan. 6. A recent Navigator Research poll found, for instance, that 39 percent of registered voters thought the House committee investigating the attack was too focused on the past, compared to 49 percent who said the committee was doing important work”)
Democrats Went All In on the January 6 Hearings. Voters Don’t Seem to Care. | Jacobin (Oct, 2022) (“Recent polls suggest that the Democrats’ sidelining of economic issues to go all in on the Capitol riot hasn’t borne fruit. While voters are most concerned about inflation, they think the party’s main priority is January 6, which barely registers.”)
See, for example, No, The Supreme Court Is Not About To Overrule Roe v. Wade | Forbes (May, 2021); Opinion Calm down. Roe v. Wade isn’t going anywhere. | The Washington Post (July, 2018) (“What new justice would want to be that man or woman, who forevermore would be credited with upending settled law and causing massive societal upheaval? As for other conservative justices, only Clarence Thomas would likely vote to overturn Roe v. Wade”, “That is to say, no one should try to predict how a justice — or the court — will rule. For now, lamentations about abortion’s end are wasted on what is mostly a red herring deployed for political expediency.”); Opinion | The next Supreme Court pick matters less than you think | The Washington Post (April, 2016); Opinion | Roe v. Wade might not be doomed after all | The Washington Post (July, 2018)
See chapter 2 of How Democracies Die
The election of 2000 might seem like an exception, but wasn’t in this context; Gore’s immediate acceptance of the Supreme Court’s decision, which was followed by nearly every other elected Democrats’, illustrates the power of bipartisan acceptance of the rules as the source of the outcome’s legitimacy.
With no national standards, this paragraph is unlikely accurate for every one of the more than 8,000 election jurisdictions in the United States. That each of those conditions may not be met universally does not refute the important point that regardless of the particulars, losing candidates who refuse to accept the results after certification and exhaustion of the legal process are denying the legitimacy of an outcome that their copartisans accepted.
In some states these election positions are elected by co-partisan voters.
John Bolton, The Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir
Twice the House passed CARES bills with substantial funding for election administration. Despite a $4 billion need, Trump and McConnell managed to limit federal assistance to an initial $400 million.
In the wake of COVID, expanding vote by mail was immediately recognized as the sensible solution to the obvious health hazards. Rather than facilitate that, Trump did everything he could to discredit voting by mail, but more importantly to make sure it was as difficult as possible. Although rarely understood publically, the major strategic value of limiting voting by mail was the stress it put on urban election administration, disproportionately deprived of its Election Day workforce by COVID. Picture the lines we saw to vote in places like Philadelphia and Detroit. Now, imagine what might have happened if the millions of voters in those cities who switched to voting by mail this year had not been able to do so.
Trump replaced the Postmaster General with a campaign crony who initiated practices intended to hobble delivery, especially in major urban areas and blocked adequate funding. And, just as he told Lester Holt that he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation, he was direct about this, saying, “They want three and a half billion dollars for something that'll turn out to be fraudulent … they need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots.”
He built his campaign around voter suppression, with an unprecedented budget, eventually replacing Pascrale with Bill Stepien, formerly his voter suppression director, and supporting outside groups like True the Vote. The Trump campaign took full advantage of it being the first presidential election after the consent decree limiting GOP suppression activities expired. It followed a strategy famously stated in Weyrich’s “I don’t want everybody to vote” speech.
He built his campaign around voter suppression, with an unprecedented budget, eventually replacing Pascrale with Bill Stepien, formerly his voter suppression director, and supporting outside groups like True the Vote. The Trump campaign took full advantage of it being the first presidential election after the consent decree limiting GOP suppression activities expired. It followed a strategy famously stated in Weyrich’s “I don’t want everybody to vote” speech.
Trump treated the executive branch as an extension of his campaign and used it to advance his political interests from resisting the intelligence community’s efforts to crack down on threats of foreign interference, to firing or displacing career officials who insisted on following the law to encouraging the Justice Department to investigate Hunter Biden.
The Trump/McConnell campaign to pack the courts culminated in the last minute approval of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Again, Trump was transparent about his motives, saying that her vote was needed to make sure that the Supreme Court decided questions about his own election properly. Before and after the election, Trump and his allies have argued that the Supreme Court should overturn the results of the election.
See, for example, How Fascism Works (Jason Stanley), Fascism and Democracy (George Orwell), The Anatomy of Fascism (Robert Paxton), On Tyranny (Timothy Snyder), The Origins of Totalitarianism (Hannah Arendt) and How Democracies Die (Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt).
Roberts and Kavanaugh might behave a bit differently if Trump disappeared.
A very insightful and important assessment! I can’t believe more people are not following you!
That this MAGA movement is a fascist movement is undeniable and many parallels can be found between the NAZI movement in Germany and the current situation here, in America. It is important to remember that the NAZI party never won a majority of the voters. Thank you for this comprehensive article.