Presidential historian explains why 'demagogue' Trump is a 'unique threat to our nation'

05 November 2024

Donald Trump's 2024 campaign is often described as his third presidential run, but in fact, it's his fourth. Trump briefly ran for president in 2000 via the Reform Party, suspending his campaign in February of that year.

Trump's first presidential run as a Republican got underway in 2015. And he went on to not only win the GOP nomination, but also, defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the general election.

In an op-ed/think piece published by the New York Times on Election Day 2024, presidential historian Jon Meacham examines Trump's influence on U.S. politics. And he emphasizes that while he had a low opinion of Trump in 2015, the former president turned out to be much more dangerous than he imagined.

"When Donald Trump began his rise to power in 2015," the 55-year-old Meacham explains, "he struck me as a dangerous but recognizable demagogue…. To me, Mr. Trump was a difference not of kind — we had long contended with illiberalism in America — but of degree. Since the Civil War, no figure with such illiberal views had ever actually won the White House. Then, he proved me wrong."

Meacham continues, "His concerted efforts to overthrow the November 2020 election very nearly succeeded — tangible proof that he is, in fact, willing to follow through on the authoritarian threats he so freely makes. I now see him as a genuine aberration in our history — a man whose contempt for constitutional democracy makes him a unique threat to the nation."

The historian points out that he isn't a Democrat, noting that he became the late Republican President George H.W. Bush's biographer. And he is supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election not because she's a Democrat, but because she believes in the U.S. Constitution, liberal democracy and the rule of law.

"I wish I were overstating the case," Meacham warns. "But I am not. Given our binary system, a vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for a democratic ethos in which we can pursue lives of purpose and prosperity under the rule of law. A vote for Donald Trump puts that ethos at risk."

Meacham adds, "Democracy is fragile and human, and its success turns on how well — or how badly — Americans manage their own appetites."

Jon Meacham's full New York Times op-ed is available at this link (subscription required).

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