Donald Trump descended into American democracy and continues to degrade the Republican party

Donald Trump has shown his authoritarian mentality from the moment he entered (I describe it as "descended" into) the 2016, presidential elections. 

Trump slowly descended a golden escalator to the basement of his eponymous New York tower, he clambered on to a makeshift stage and began his (racist based!) announcement speech. On 16 June 2015, the then mogul announced his White House run. Four years on, reporters who covered that Trump Tower speech recall the lies and bombast that defined his (failed!) presidency

Maine Writer - Republicans are drunk on the cult "kool-aid". Their leader suggests executing and shooting enemies. The GOP continues to bow down. 

Echo opinion published in the Miami Herald:

Back in 2016, Americans brushed off as hyperbole comments like his offer to pay the legal fees of supporters who knocked “the crap out of” protesters at one of his rallies. It was, thanks to Trump, that for the first time in American history, rioters stormed a democratic institution — the U.S. Capitol — to stop the certification of an election.

What if the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol had succeeded?

There are no lessons learned. Cult supporters continue to support Trump, who leads national and state Republican presidential primary polls.  All this while Trump's rhetoric has gone from off-the-cuff remarks to straight-up violent.

He’s suggested a military general, the man he appointed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should have been executed. Trump wrote on his social media website (fake!) Truth Social that General Mark Milley’s phone call, done in coordination with Trump’s defense secretary, to China after January 6 was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”

Trump also posted a photo on (fake!)Truth Social of a law clerk who works for the New York judge presiding over his civil fraud trial, an invitation for violence against the judiciary. 

In fact, that (fake!) Truth Social message prompted the judge to issue a gag order barring Trump from speaking publicly about his staff. Trump told Republicans in California that shoplifters should be shot, raising the obvious comparison with a strongman Trump personally praised: Former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, whose war on drugs embraced extrajudicial killings of thousands of suspects without a trial.

Trump also vowed to investigate media outlets he sees as enemies, showing his disregard for the Constitution and freedom of press. He’s called on Republicans to shutdown the federal government to stall the criminal cases against him and urged the House to impeach President Joe Biden because the “lowlifes Impeached me TWICE.” As have authoritarians before him, Trump sees the state’s machinery as a mere conduit to his own interests and retribution, which he masks under the guise of making America great again or draining the swamp.

The problem isn’t just that Americans have become numb to his remarks. Many see violence and the eroding of the institutions that keep a democracy strong as justified means to achieve the greatness that the former president sells them. It’s become part of the GOP platform to defund federal agencies like the FBI, which also investigates local crimes that Republicans themselves promise to curtail if they return to the White House. 

For whatever cult mentality exists, pitifully few conservatives seem bothered when Trump vows to use the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate his political rivals If Trump is a symptom of our polarized times, he’s made the annihilation of one’s opponents a righteous cause. A pastor’s opening prayers at an Iowa Trump rally over the weekend said, “We ask that those who stand against [Trump] be put to silence.”  (OMG...this is not a prayer, because there is no prayerful intent in this plea......!)

If reelected, could Trump incite another January 6, or even something worse? That’s a possibility that few of his rivals in the presidential primary publicly contemplate. Instead, many of them escalate Trump’s violent rhetoric. If the former president considered bombing drug labs in Mexico, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he wants to send military troops into the country to fight drug cartels. That would be the type of foreign intervention that Republicans themselves say prevents the country from putting “America First.” DeSantis also vowed to “start slitting throats” of federal bureaucrats.

Republicans who call out Trump’s threat to democracy are losing ground in their party. That’s dangerous because an emboldened Trump back in the White House, seeking revenge for his perceived victimization, could do more damage than he did in his first go-round.