Public Domain Via The White House
Donald Trump
First, former President Trump convinced Republicans chased by the raging mob he sent to attack the Capitol to violently overthrow democracy to pretend it never happened. Now, he’s joking about becoming a lawless dictator on Day One if he’s reelected.
It’s no joke and the most frightening part is not nearly enough American voters realize how serious that threat is yet. It’s one of the few times in Trump’s life he has ever told the truth.
It came in one of Trump’s regular venues for spreading endless streams of outrageous lies and violent threats against anyone who opposes him. It was a Fox News town hall hosted by rightwing sycophant Sean Hannity.
Hannity tried to give Trump every opportunity to walk back his threats of using the presidency to ignore election results and politicize the Justice Department to prosecute everyone on his growing list of political enemies. Hannity was practically begging Trump to deny it.
“Do you in any way have any plans whatsoever, if re-elected president, to abuse power?” he pleaded. “To break the law? To use the government to go after people?” Break the law? Donald Trump? Where in the world would Hannity get that idea?
Day One?
Somehow Hannity avoided fainting on the air when Trump replied: “Except for Day One.” There was a moment of silence before Hannity began fumbling for words again. Trump made fun of Hannity’s panic. “Look, he’s going crazy. This guy, he says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said, ‘No, no, no, other than Day One.”
Then Trump let Hannity off the hook by simply recycling some of his old Fox lies. He claimed his only dictatorial acts would be closing the border to Mexico to keep out raping and murdering Brown immigrants and “drilling, drilling, drilling” for oil because saving the planet from climate change is liberal. “After that, I’m not a dictator,” Trump promised.
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By then, the Fox News audience was in on the joke. They know the real reasons Trump is running for president again are personal. Firing the federal prosecutors for criminally indicting Trump for trying to overthrow Biden’s election and stealing top-secret government documents is the most important.
He’s promising to replace them with partisan hacks to fraudulently charge Biden and his entire crime family for stealing the 2020 election and all the Republicans who were planning on testifying against Trump. How about prosecuting deranged prosecutor Jack Smith and his Trump-hating wife too.
The second most important issue is what Republicans like to call “election integrity.” Republicans knew Democrats cast millions of fraudulent votes nationwide to steal Trump’s landslide election victory because they didn’t know a single person who voted for Biden. Trump has an ironclad plan to make sure Democrats never steal another presidential election from Republicans again, but it’s going to take a lot longer than Day One.
Believe It or Not
Apparently, there are a lot of American voters who still find it difficult to believe a former president of the United States would seriously try to destroy American democracy even after watching it nearly happen just two years ago.
Trump’s entire presidency and everything he did to try to stay in office after his defeat for reelection by the largest vote in American history has always sounded more like a fictional parody of the most corrupt politician who ever existed than anything that could actually happen in America. But it really happened and it’s not over yet.
When Trump recently swore to rid America of those who oppose him “that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” historians were among those condemning him for echoing the dehumanizing rhetoric Adolph Hitler used to justify the extermination of Jews.
Rather than allaying any of those political concerns, Trump’s campaign spokesman multiplied them by threatening Trump’s critics that their “sad, miserable existence will be crushed” in his next administration.
This is intentional. Trump will continue publicly leaning into jokes about becoming a dictator just like his pal Vladimir Putin whose massive internet propaganda campaign supported Trump both times he ran for president before and will do so again. MAGA Republicans think it’s hilarious. It’s not.
If Americans were ever oblivious enough to return Trump to the presidency, he would be much more dangerous the second time. One of few valuable lessons Trump learned for his own purposes the first time was that the president has virtually unlimited power to pardon as many criminals convicted of federal crimes as he wants.
The American judicial system continues its excruciatingly slow pace in bringing Trump to justice for his crimes against democracy. In every major national election since 2018, voters have turned out in record numbers to protect democracy and the rule of law.
We all have to do it again in 2024. Otherwise, all of Trump’s jokes about becoming an American dictator will be on us.
