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When an authoritarian is on the ballot and most of the country shrugs (if they’re not cheering)

After days of refusing to say whether he believed that Donald Trump had lost the 2020 election (five times in a single New York Times interview, as captured in the screengrab above), including when questioned directly about it in his debate with Governor Tim Walz, Senator JD Vance finally vocalized the MAGA party line: “Did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use.”

We'll take that as an unsurprising, No. Vance added, “But look, I really couldn’t care less if you agree with me or disagree with me on this issue.”

Why should "focusing on 2020" matter? Because it's the Big Lie on which Donald Trump has based his 2024 campaign. Trump has repeatedly asserted, and continues to insist, that he didn't lose the 2020 election. (He's no loser. The election was rigged! He would win even in California -- where Trump lost to Biden in 2020 by 5 million votes -- "if Jesus was the voter counter.") No one left in the party, who has thoughts of facing voters or finding employment in the second Trump administration (if he wins), will contradict the MAGA leader.

After losing the presidency and leaving the White House, Trump campaigned against Republicans who supported his 2021 impeachment -- and he beat them. His critics have been drummed out of the party. In 2024, he defeated a string of Republican challengers to win -- handily -- a third GOP nomination for president. The man dominates the Republican Party. With everyone in a position of leadership falling into line, the former president has convinced a majority of the base that he didn't lose in 2020. Virtually no one with any stature within the Republican Party dares to confirm that Trump lost a free and fair election in 2020.

Senator Vance pretends that he's focused on the future. Nonsense. The Big Lie matters in 2024, because it is a promise that if Trump loses, he will deny it. Count on it. Nothing could be more certain. Trump has primed the Republican Party, including officials at all levels and the MAGA base, that the only way he loses in 2024 is if the election is rigged. His folks ("We" in his telling) rioted at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Does anyone doubt that Trump would incite them to violence again?

Trump stands by 'the enemy from within'
Trump has pledged to go after "the enemy from within" -- his Democratic political opponents -- several times. When Howard Kurtz, on Fox News yesterday, provides Trump an off-ramp to moderate his comments or claim he has been misinterpreted, Trump reaffirms his views.

Kurtz says, "The 'enemy from within' is a pretty ominous phrase." Trump responds, "I think it's accurate. I mean, I think it's accurate." Trump goes on to call out two Democratic members of Congress, Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi.

As Trump describes "Adam Shifty Schiff," Kurtz interjects, "But, again, he's a political opponent ...," not "an enemy." Trump responds, "Well, of course he's an enemy. He's an enemy."

Trump makes it abundantly clear that he means exactly what he has said. Members of the Democratic Party elected into office are bigger threats to the United States than are Russia or China or ISIS.

Unlike JD Vance, or Mike Johnson, or Glen Younkin or any number of elected Republicans who dodge and weave or pretend not to understand, Trump is speaking without constraint: He means what he says about the enemy from within. We have no reason to doubt him when he says he would use the national guard or the nation's military to oppose his political enemies. He wanted to do this in his first term. No one will be there to stop him if he lands in the White House again in 2025.

Trump is convinced he will win
Trump's age has briefly appeared on the media radar (with reports of him being exhausted). And, while I recently downplayed the suggestion that Trump has experienced significant mental deterioration since 2020, I can't be certain. One sign of age-related decline is that folks lose their filters. Trump appears to be losing his -- at a recent charity banquet and at a Pennsylvania rally, for instance. He called out Kamala Harris: "You're a shit vice president." He also spent ten minutes at the birthplace of Arnold Palmer speaking about how well hung the late golfer was. That's unfiltered.

Is Trump losing it? Or is he just being more open about who he is and saying just what he thinks? I believe he is convinced that he is going win this election, so he sees no reason to moderate or shroud his views. Trump feels unconstrained. That's enough to make a judgment about him and his fitness for public office. With an abject, unprincipled political party at his back, surrounded by sycophants who wish to serve a strongman, and emboldened by a disgraceful, partisan supreme court inviting a lawless second term -- Trump is confident that he needs no filters.

Whether in decline or not, the man is a threat to the country. He doesn't belong anywhere near the Oval Office. Back in 2020, after Trump lost the election, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that Donald Trump was ‘“stupid as well as being ill-tempered,” a “despicable human being” and a “narcissist.”

Privately, he said in his oral history that “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump left office, and that Trump’s behavior “only underscores the good judgment of the American people. They’ve had just enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him.”
“And for a narcissist like him,” McConnell continued, “that’s been really hard to take, and so his behavior since the election has been even worse, by far, than it was before, because he has no filter now at all.”

For Trump's party and the MAGA faithful, that doesn't matter. It's clear that this will be a razor close election.

Authoritarianism is not just something that appears in history books or crops up somewhere far away. It is, in 2024, right on our doorstep. American democracy is at risk. But for most of the country (regardless of who wins in November), it's not top of mind. A subset of the voters -- but not all -- who are prepared to reject Trump regard their choice as embracing democracy and rejecting authoritarianism. While, on the other side, Republican leaders and the MAGA base overwhelming wish to follow a strongman, even if it means rejecting democratic norms. Moreover, among the ranks of intellectuals who have attracted JD Vance and the white evangelicals in positions of authority, many straightforwardly declare that they prefer a nation dominated by their version of Christianity to a country where majorities with whom they disagree are permitted to rule.

Fifteen days to go for a decision.