'Path to dictatorship': Columnist says Trump‘s 'thirst for vengeance' would go unchecked in 2nd term

Former President Donald Trump appears poised to secure the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 assuming his current poll performance holds throughout the GOP primary. However, one columnist warns that virtually nothing could stop America from becoming a "dictatorship" if Trump prevails next November.

In a Thursday column for the Washington Post, contributing editor Robert Kagan warned that Trump's political power will only increase after he secures the nomination, and that the United States is on a "clear path to dictatorship," as not enough Americans are taking his threat to subvert democracy seriously. He also referred to the notion that a Republican other than Trump could win the GOP nomination as "magical thinking."

"Barring some miracle, Trump will soon be the presumptive Republican nominee for president. When that happens, there will be a swift and dramatic shift in the political power dynamic, in his favor," Kagan wrote. "All this will end once Trump wins Super Tuesday. Votes are the currency of power in our system, and money follows, and by those measures, Trump is about to become far more powerful than he already is. The hour of casting about for alternatives is closing. The next phase is about people falling into line."

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Kagan contrasted the GOP's likely conformity toward another Trump presidency with the "fractious" nature of the Democratic Party's base. He suggested that the candidacies of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Jill Stein — who are running to Biden's left on the independent and Green Party ballot lines, respectively — show that President Joe Biden has a lot more ground to cover than his likely general election opponent when it comes to unifying his base.

"Trump will thus enter the general-election campaign early next year with momentum, backed by growing political and financial resources, and an increasingly unified party. Can the same be said of Biden? Is Biden’s power likely to grow over the coming months? Will his party unify around him? Or will alarm and doubt among Democrats, already high, continue to increase?" Kagan wrote. "Biden, as some have pointed out, does not enjoy the usual advantages of incumbency. Trump is effectively also an incumbent, after all. That means Biden is unable to make the usual incumbent’s claim that electing his opponent is a leap into the unknown."

Kagan also warned the "national mood" ahead of the 2024 election was an advantage for Trump, and drew comparisons between the American electorate today and the German electorate in the 1930's — right before Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor.

"In Weimar Germany, Hitler and other agitators benefited from the squabbling of the democratic parties, right and left, the endless fights over the budget, the logjams in the legislature, the fragile and fractious coalitions. German voters increasingly yearned for someone to cut through it all and get something — anything — done. It didn’t matter who was behind the political paralysis, either, whether the intransigence came from the right or the left," he wrote.

READ MORE: 2024 is all about stopping 'fascist' Trump from becoming a full-fledged dictator

Kagan's prediction that Trump would govern like a dictator isn't hyperbole. He called for the Constitution to be "terminated" in a 2022 post to his Truth Social account. And during a campaign speech in New Hampshire, he pledged to weaponize the machinery of the federal government against his political enemies if elected in 2024, even referring to his opponents as "vermin."

"We caught a glimpse of [Trump's] deep thirst for vengeance in his Veterans Day promise to 'root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream.'" Kagan wrote. "Note the equation of himself with 'America and the American Dream.' It is he they are trying to destroy, he believes, and as president, he will return the favor."

Read Kagan's full column here.