Trump’s 2024 campaign is his most 'extremist and authoritarian' yet: analysis

During an early May interview with NBC News, Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) — who is being mentioned as a possible running mate for presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump — refused to say whether or not he would accept the election results if incumbent President Joe Biden wins.

To Scott's critics, this is a troubling example of Trump's influence on the Republican Party.

2024 marks Trump's fourth presidential campaign and his third as a Republican candidate (in 2000, Trump ran for president with the Reform Party). MSNBC Opinion Editor James Downie, in a May 5 column, lays out some reasons why he believes this campaign is Trump's most dangerous yet.

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"Trump's approach to election results has become his approach, and his devotees' approach, to the law more broadly," Downie argues. "Even as their policies and rhetoric have become more extreme, Trump and his MAGA acolytes are already lining up the justifications — legal and otherwise — to buttress their extremist and authoritarian agenda in ways that simply didn't occur to the first Trump Administration."

This time, Downie stresses, Trump has much more of a legal strategy than he did in the past — from immigration to abortion rights.

"Immigration is just the tip of a very dangerous iceberg," the MSNBC.com opinion editor warns. "In close advisers like Stephen Miller and aligned projects like Project 2025, we can see not only the policies, but also, the underlying justifications and legal authorities they have ready to go…. Trump's supporters are determined not to waste time this round."

Downie elaborates, "There's no better example of this than the Comstock Act: Rather than wait for congressional Republicans to pass a new national abortion ban, they could simply resurrect a 'zombie law' to criminalize any materials used in abortions and count on the more Trump-friendly courts to back them up."

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James Downie's full MSNBC column is available at this link.