Kamala Harris has said of Trump: "He is someone who will stop at nothing to claim power for himself" and "... a second Trump term would be a huge risk for America -- and dangerous." A considerable number of the people who surrounded Trump in his first term agree.
Harris added: "Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged." On that point, it's not clear that the critics who served inside the Trump administration would agree. Why not? Because they spoke with him in the White House in private: they heard then what Trump is only now saying in public. The Trump they saw in private is the man now emboldened to reveal himself in public.
In an interview with CNN's Kaitlan Collins, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper affirms that he takes Trump's threats against "the enemy within" seriously and reminds her that last year the former president spoke about a second term being about retribution. Collins asks if he fears that Trump would use the military against U.S. citizens. Esper responds:
Yes, I do. Of course, because I lived through that. And I saw over the summer of 2020 where President Trump and those around him wanted to use the national guard in various capacities in cities such as Chicago and Portland and Seattle. And of course there was a moment in time, as you just described, where he -- on that early date in June where he wanted to bring in active military as well. . . .
Carol Leonnig, who co-wrote I Alone Can Fix It with her Washington Post colleague Philip Rucker about Trump's final year in the White House, also pushes back on the idea that Trump has significantly changed in the past four years ["Deadline: White House," MSNBC, October 15, 2024]:
I look back on his first administration and see all of the ways that he said exactly the same things he’s saying now.
He just said them privately. You know, he wanted – Let’s go back in time a little. . . . In 2018, 2019, and 2020 he was pressing his military officials to let him use the U.S. military, the national guard against the public. Most notably in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the protests that rose up from that Minneapolis man’s death at the hands of police.
He wanted to use the power of the Department of Justice and the FBI to target people who had been political and policy enemies of his. For example, Mr. Comey, the FBI Director; Andrew McCabe, the Deputy FBI Director. Other individuals who had pressed for an investigation of his campaign – he wanted them audited, he wanted them investigated, he wanted them indicted.
And in some respects, he was lobbying all of this privately. Now he is just saying it a lot more out loud. And he’s no longer hemmed in by a White House Counsel, or a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or a Secretary of Defense who told him, No.
Mark Esper, Mark Milley, Don McGann, and others all told Trump, No. Those folks will not be part of a second Trump administration.
Leonnig continues, "But what you see, Nicole, and what you are amplifying and giving a spotlight to is how Donald Trump believes he will get his way on those questions and those orders as the president if he elected in November. He is saying out loud that he will use the government the way he sees fit, the military, the Justice Department. And people who are on the wrong side of him will be the targets."
Chris Hayes reviews General Milley's judgment that "Trump is fascist to the core" in assessing the possibility of a second Trump presidency. How, Hayes asks, could half the nation be poised to elect such a man? He answers: first, because tens of millions of Americans, after decades of far-right programming, are primed for an authoritarian leader. They want a strongman.
Second, the press has proven incapable of conveying just how perilous our situation is. "In part, somewhat understandably, because Donald Trump is in fact the world's most famous liar. He is such a liar that even many of his biggest supporters simply think he'll never do the things he says he'll do."
The people who worked closely with Donald Trump know that this isn't true. Trump tried (out of sight) to use the levers of power, to employ the military and the justice department against his enemies. He was stymied during his first term by advisors and appointees who pushed back. In a second term, he will choose men and women (mostly men) who are willing to do his bidding.
JD Vance is the first up. Many more Republicans, as we have seen, are primed to step up and serve Donald Trump. Some are eager to embrace a strongman; some prefer religious zealotry to majority rule; some just seek lower taxes and less regulation; some are simply ambitious individuals indifferent to the cause that advances their careers. All are hostile to democracy.
Authoritarianism or democracy. That's the choice we face.