William Cooper is the author of “How America Works ... And Why It Doesn’t”
All agree on one thing: Trump must not win.
There’s my take at CNN earlier this week:
“The widespread fear that Trump will actually be a dictator, however, is misplaced. If Trump wins the 2024 election, American democracy might be suspended, at least temporarily. But it won’t be replaced by a dictatorship, which is a coherent and recognizable system of government. Instead, if Trump wins, my view is that American democracy will be replaced by American “chaosracy” — an incoherent, volatile and unpredictable mix of some government institutions that function democratically and some that don’t.”
There’s Robert Kagan’s at the Washington Post:
“We caught a glimpse of his deep thirst for vengeance in his Veterans Day promise to “root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream.” Note the equation of himself with “America and the American Dream.” It is he they are trying to destroy, he believes, and as president, he will return the favor.”
There’s Ishaan Tharoor at the Post:
“As my colleagues have reported over the past year, Trump has made clear his stark, authoritarian vision for a potential second term. He would embark on a wholesale purge of the federal bureaucracy, weaponize the Justice Department to explicitly go after his political opponents (something he claims is being done to him), stack government agencies across the board with political appointees prescreened as ideological Trump loyalists, and dole out pardons to myriad officials and apparatchiks as incentives to do his bidding or stay loyal.”
There’s the New York Times:
“Mr. Trump’s violent and authoritarian rhetoric on the 2024 campaign trail has attracted growing alarm and comparisons to historical fascist dictators and contemporary populist strongmen. In recent weeks, he has dehumanized his adversaries as ‘vermin’ who must be ‘rooted out,’ declared that immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country,’ encouraged the shooting of shoplifters and suggested that the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, deserved to be executed for treason.”
And there’s Liz Cheney’s at the Wall Street Journal:
“As we approach the 2024 primaries, some Republicans have begun arguing that the checks and balances constructed by the framers of our Constitution make our republic invulnerable to whatever illegal or unconstitutional acts Donald Trump might attempt in a second term. The framers explicitly warned us that the checks and balances are only as effective as the people responsible for carrying them out. Those who try to dismiss the risk of a second Trump term do our country a grave disservice.
By design, a president’s awesome executive power must be checked by both Congress and the courts. Since Jan. 6, 2021, we have learned that our current Congress won’t play this role. Republican senators such as Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and J.D. Vance have shown that they won’t step forward to check Mr. Trump’s power. Even Sen. Mike Lee, who explicitly agreed on Jan. 6 that Mr. Trump’s plan to seize power was unconstitutional, now pushes crackpot conspiracy theories about the nature of the attack.”