Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie. And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.
Seven years ago, Ben Wittes wrote: "The soft spot, the least tyrant-proof part of the government, is the U.S. Department of Justice and the larger law enforcement and regulatory apparatus of the United States government."
We interrupt the horse-race punditry, polling proctology, and omphaloskepsis1, to bring you this bit of news: Donald Trump keeps telling us what he intends to do.
In Florida the other day, the putative GOP nominee pledged to execute the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history” on his first day in office. His remark, we are told, was “met with thunderous applause” from the MAGA crowd.
He’s making other promises as well. Earlier this week, the Wapo reported: “Trump and allies plot revenge, Justice Department control in a second term.”
Yesterday, he confirmed it.
In an interview on Univision, Trump was asked if he would indeed weaponize the FBI and Justice Department against his opponents. Perhaps attention should be paid to his answer:
“Yeah. If they do this, and they’ve already done it, but if they follow through on this, yeah, it could certainly happen in reverse.”
“What they’ve done is they’ve released the genie out of the box”…
“If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election.”
“He’s said it all before; he’ll say it all again,” writes Susan Glasser. “The question, with one year left on the clock, is: Who’s listening?
