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Donald Trump likes to say he doesn’t actually lose elections–only the “rigged” ones. Such comments are not mere bluster, like the president’s boasts about golf. They are threats to democracy, which is more fragile than many Americans may realize.
At the end of last year, I asked former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara on his podcast whether we should be worried about Trump trying to pursue a third term. No, he assured me, we have the Constitution; that’s ironclad. I was uneasy with this answer then. My fears have only deepened.
About a month into Trump’s second term, I began warning that the Putinization of America was well under way. Now, after a summer of National Guard deployments in American cities, crackdowns on protests, massive layoffs of federal workers, purges of anyone deemed disloyal in the FBI, immigration raids on workplaces, and unfettered self-dealing, Trump and his administration seem more erratic, unpredictable, and chaotic than ever.
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