Trump’s Rage at Obama Explodes, Unnerving Experts: “We’re in Trouble”
As President Trump’s threats to prosecute Barack Obama fly off the rails and experts in democracy grow more alarmed, a scholar of democratic breakdown explains how we know authoritarian rule is now upon us.
In the last few days, we seem to have crossed a threshold. President Trump is ratcheting up the authoritarianism and threatening to prosecute his enemies in a new kind of way. In a series of angry new rants, Trump accused Barack Obama and other members of Obama’s administration of serious crimes. He’s also calling for Senator Adam Schiff to be put in “prison.” Critically, all this has been accompanied by unabashedly corrupt manipulation of the bureaucracy that’s designed to manufacture pretexts for the prosecutions of those enemies. Ryan Enos, a professor of government at Harvard, put it very starkly on Bluesky, saying that authoritarianism is “right here in front of us.” So we invited Enos on the show. He explains how we know the moment has arrived, how Trump compares to other authoritarians around the globe, and why our only choices now are to fight it or accept that this is America’s future.
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