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Here Are the Trump Threats That Should Actually Scare You
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The Bulwark is home to Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller, Bill Kristol, JVL, Sam Stein, and more. We are the largest pro-democracy bundle on Substack for news and analysis on politics and culture—supported by a community built on good-faith.
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Here Are the Trump Threats That Should Actually Scare You

His ‘you won’t have to vote anymore’ remark was bad but misinterpreted. There are others that deserve more scrutiny.

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Will Saletan
Jul 30, 2024
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Here Are the Trump Threats That Should Actually Scare You
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(Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

ONE OF THE PERILS OF CALLING out Donald Trump’s fascist outbursts is that sometimes we get it wrong. He says something that appears scary, and we sound the alarm about it, only to find that we misunderstood him. These mistakes help Trump by allowing him and his supporters to bemoan so-called Trump Derangement Syndrome. And they distract us from other statements in which he really does threaten democracy.

That’s what happened this weekend, when many people, including much of the press, went ballistic over a comment Trump made about Christians on Friday.

Here’s that riff, as delivered by Trump at the Turning Point Action Summit in Florida.

Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. . . . You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.

Many people who fear Trump thought, when they heard or read about these remarks, that he was pledging to become a dictator and prevent any further elections. But that interpretation doesn’t fit what Trump said. He addressed his remarks to people who support him. He told them not that they couldn’t vote, but that they wouldn’t have to. And he explained why: because before the next election, he would have fixed all the country’s problems.

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On Monday, in a rambling interview with Laura Ingraham, Trump expressed befuddlement at alarmist interpretations of his speech. He tried to clarify what he had meant in his message to pro-Trump Christians:

Don’t worry about the future. You have to vote on Nov. 5. After that, you don’t have to worry about voting anymore; I don’t care. Because the country will be fixed, and we won’t even need your vote anymore . . . If you don’t want to vote anymore, that’s okay.

Trump’s riff, in the Turning Point speech and in his explanation to Ingraham, was creepy for several reasons: the way he spoke to Christians as though they were a foreign tribe (because to him, they are); the laughable idea that all our problems would be gone in four years and that he would be the one to fix them; and above all, his indifference to whether people vote in elections that aren’t about him. But it wasn’t a threat to end democracy.

The real threats to democracy come from other things Trump said in that same speech and at other rallies over the past two weeks.

At the Turning Point conference, Trump declared, “As soon as I take the oath of office, I will stop the Biden-Harris administration’s weaponization of law enforcement against Americans of faith and against, frankly, their political opponent.” Who does Trump mean by “their political opponent”? On Truth Social, he wrote the answer: “ME.” He’s signaling that he’ll use presidential power to end all investigations and prosecutions of himself.

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Why would Trump announce this before the election? To claim a mandate. He’ll say that he told us he would get rid of the cases against him, that we heard this and voted for him, and therefore he has our blessing to do exactly that.

Trump is also pretending that he’s been exonerated in the most open-and-shut case against him: the one about his retention of classified documents and his obstruction of the government’s attempts to recover those documents. At the Turning Point forum and in a speech to the Bitcoin 2024 Conference on Saturday, he said he had “won” the case. He implied that Judge Aileen Cannon’s recent dismissal of the charges against him validated his insistence that “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

In reality, Cannon’s ruling was just about procedure—the manner in which Special Counsel Jack Smith had been appointed—and she’s likely to be overturned on appeal. But by pretending that she cleared him on the merits, Trump is laying the groundwork to take office, order his Justice Department to drop the case, and tell the public that he’s right to do so because he’s been exonerated.

Trump also demonstrated how he’ll rationalize dropping the other federal case against him: the one about his scheme to overturn the 2020 election. At a rally in Michigan on July 20, he told his supporters, “Don’t worry about these fake indictments. These aren’t indictments. These are Biden indictments.” As a private citizen, Trump’s talk of fake indictments carries no legal weight. But as president, he can quash the indictments. He’ll say he did it because they’re fake. As for whatever criticism he might get, he’ll explain that he told us he was going to do so. 

Trump’s assault on law enforcement won’t end with the federal cases. On Truth Social, he called for “dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts,” including cases in which he has already been convicted or found liable: the New York hush-money case, the Trump Organization business fraud case, and the defamation case in which a jury found that Trump, more likely than not, committed the equivalent of sexual assault. These judgments should be thrown out, said Trump, because “The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks.”

Five days later, at his rally in Michigan, Trump said any judge who ruled against him was corrupt. “We have some real crooked judges,” he alleged without evidence. “The only way I can lose is crooked judges.”

It wouldn’t be fair, however, to say that Trump plans to abuse presidential power only to protect himself. He also plans to abuse it to protect people who committed crimes for him on January 6th. At the Turning Point conference, he called these people “hostages” and demanded to know when the government would be “letting them out” of jail. He pledged:

From the moment I win the election, I will rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner who has been unjustly victimized by the Biden-Harris regime so we can get them out of prison and back to their families where they belong.

Trump is also signaling general contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law. At a rally in North Carolina on Wednesday, he scorned due process for MS-13 gang members: “Nancy Pelosi said they should stand trial. You know, nice fair trial. No, these are monsters.” And at his Minnesota rally, he demanded prosecution of protesters for “burning our American flag.” He explained: “I know they say it’s unconstitutional. Well, make it not unconstitutional. You burn our American flag, you should get immediately mandatory one year in jail.”

That’s what Trump is planning if he wins the election: legal immunity for himself, and more efforts to suspend or curtail constitutional rights for his enemies.

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On the other hand, in case Trump loses the election, he’s preparing a different line of attack. Once more, he’s telling his followers that any election he doesn’t win—like any court case in which he’s found guilty or liable—is corrupt and illegitimate.

If Democrats “don’t cheat, we win this state easily,” he told the crowd in Minnesota, where no Republican presidential ticket has won in more than half a century. “They cheat. They have no shame,” he alleged. Pointing to journalists at the rally, he raged: “Do you understand that, you crooked people? You’re the most crooked people.” As the crowd booed the reporters, Trump returned to his lies about Democrats: “They cheat. They cheated in the last election. And they’re going to cheat in this election.” 

This is the kind of vitriol and incitement Trump spews at his rallies. And we’ve seen where it leads us, because he’s done it before.

That’s why we have to monitor his threats and bring them to the attention of our fellow citizens. We can’t get complacent. But we also have to be judicious. Every time we hyperventilate about a supposedly fascist or racist remark that turns out not to be what we said it was, we’re crying wolf. And the wolf is all too real.

Share this article with someone you think would appreciate having Trump’s recent remarks clarified.

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