Seeking retribution

More on Trump’s plans for when he returns:

Donald Trump’s talk of punishing his critics and seeking to “weaponize” the US justice department against his political opponents has experts and former DoJ officials warning he poses a direct threat to the rule of law and democracy in the US.

Trump’s talk of seeking “retribution” against foes, including some he has branded “vermin”, has coincided with plans that Maga loyalists at rightwing thinktanks are assembling to expand the president’s power and curb the DoJ, the FBI and other federal agencies. All of it has fueled critics’ fears that in a second term Trump would govern as an unprecedentedly authoritarian American leader.

And a second term is looking way too likely.

Trump’s angry mindset was revealed on Veterans Day when he denigrated foes as “vermin” who needed to be “rooted out”, echoing fascist rhetoric from Italy and Germany in the 1930s.

“I’m hard-pressed to find any candidates anywhere who are so open that they would use the power of the state to go after critics and enemies,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard government professor and co-author of How Democracies Die.

“This is one of the most openly authoritarian campaigns I’ve ever seen. You have to go back to the far-right authoritarians in the 1930s in Europe or in 1970s Latin America to find the kind of dehumanizing and violent language that Trump is starting to consistently use.”

I’m pretty sure it’s THE most authoritarian campaign for this particular country.

“US, democratic institutions are hard to kill,” noted Levitsky. “But Trump and people around him are better prepared this time. Trump learned he needs to purge and pack an administration with his loyalists.

“Autocrats have to take state institutions and pack them. Trump has learned from experience which makes him more dangerous.”

One ominous plan Project 2025 has been weighing would allow Trump to invoke the 1871 Insurrection Act on his first day in office, greenlighting using military forces against political foes and demonstrators protesting a new term for Trump, according to the Washington Post.

Jeffrey Clark, the former DoJ official who schemed with Trump about ways to overturn his loss in Georgia and other states and who the Fulton county district attorney has indicted along with Trump and 17 others, has been “leading the work on the Insurrection Act under Project 2025”, the Post has reported.

Let’s hope he drops dead soon.

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