By Andy Brack
If you want to be frightened in May more than anything you’ve ever experienced on Halloween, just read the new Time interview with former President Donald Trump.
Any lover of American democracy – independent, Republican or Democrat – should be terrified. Trump 2.0 – the guy accused of dozens of felonies and currently on trial for paying hush-money to a porn star – is way more scary than the guy who won the nation’s top office in 2016.
Reporter Eric Cortellessa sat down twice with Trump at his Palm Beach compound and interviewed a lot of people inside his circle before writing “How Far Trump Would Go,” a 26-minute read that should shake any lover of freedom to the core. His conclusion: Today’s Trump thinks he was too nice in his four years as president. If he gets another four years, he won’t be.
Here are quotes from the story that highlight what Trump says he’ll do if he wins a second term (and he’s been saying these things on the stump, not just in an interview with this reporter):
Detention centers: “To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland.”
Abortion: “He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans.”
Funding: “He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers.”
Justice: “He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding.”
Insurrectionist pardons: “He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury.”
Allies: “He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense.”
Civil service, more: “He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.”
In short, Trump would replace real democracy – the kind of freedoms 250 years of Americans fought and died for – with autocracy. He essentially wants to be a king, the kind of leader the Founding Fathers threw off.
When Trump was asked to explain a recent comment that he would be only a “dictator for a day,” the former president reiterated what has become a pat answer – that he was joking. But Cortellessa’s story ends like this:
“Whether or not he was kidding about bringing a tyrannical end to our 248-year experiment in democracy, I ask him, ‘Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles?’ Trump says no. Quite the opposite, he insists. ‘I think a lot of people like it.’”
Time’s cover story on Trump included full transcripts and other fact-checked information for people to understand the veracity of reporting, historian Heather Cox Richardson noted in a commentary.
“The transcripts reflect the former president’s scattershot language that makes little logical sense but conveys impressions by repeating key phrases and advancing a narrative of grievance. The fact-checking reveals that narrative is based largely on fantasy.”
Make no mistake: 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump is a threat to the democracy and freedoms we’ve taken for granted for far too long.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to feedback@statehousereport.com.
