A 2nd #Trump admin could #weaponize existing government agencies to dismantle democracy itself.
This article is part of “Project 2025: The Plot Against #America,” a Nation special issue devoted to unpacking the right’s vast & chilling program for a 2nd Trump term.
managing elections to benefit himself & his #Republican allies; gutting public broadcasting & constraining #press#freedom; & undermining civil society. #Trump, who…demanded that the results of #Georgia’s 2020…[election] be “recalculated” to give him a win, wants the trappings of #democracy w/o the reality of electoral consequences. That’s what #propaganda experts Edward Herman & Frank Brodhead described as “demonstration elections,” in which…wins are assured for the #authoritarians….
“The biggest innovation of 21st-century #authoritarians has been to maintain the facade of democratic #elections while at the same time tilting the rules against their opponents,” the group explains in its report, The Authoritarian Playbook. “They do this by suppressing votes & biasing, distorting, falsifying, or even overturning the results—either through capturing the referees or by manipulating the electoral rules in their favor.”
Greg Sargent interviews Nichoals Grossman to discuss Trump's claim that Putin will release Evan Gershkovich if Trump is electioned:
"This is yet another way Trump is wrecking the guardrails of democracy, this time by openly sabotaging current US foreign policy expressly to help himself politically while aligning himself with the world's autocrats and dictators – in this case Putin."