'Deranged bucket list': Ex-Bush official details Trump’s plan to 'give authoritarianism a try'

During the 2000s, Nicolle Wallace served as White House communications director under President George W. Bush before becoming an adviser for the late Sen. John McCain's (R-Arizona) 2008 presidential campaign. But in 2024, the Never Trump conservative and host of MSNBC's "Deadline: White House" is rooting for President Joe Biden's reelection campaign and is sounding the alarm about the "authoritarian" dangers that GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump will pose if he wins the nomination and defeats Biden in the general election.

Wallace discussed those dangers when, on Monday, February 26, she launched the series "American Autocracy" and hosted a panel that included historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, attorney Sherrilyn Ifill and University of Pennsylvania professor Anthea Butler (author of the 2021 book "White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America").

Wallace told "Deadline: White House" viewers, "Donald Trump will give authoritarianism a try if reelected. That's not hyperbole. It's not Trump derangement syndrome. And Donald Trump keeps hinting at and outright telling us it is on his deranged bucket list."

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The MSNBC host got no argument from her guests. Ben-Ghiat warned that too many Americans are in denial about Trump's authoritarian aims, not unlike Europeans and Latin Americans of the past.

Ben-Ghiat explained, "One of the things my research shows is that from the Germans in the early 1930s to the Chileans in the early 1970s — who said, 'We're not going to have a coup' as (countries) all around them were having coups — people are always in denial. They're always unprepared. And very often, they think it can't happen here."

The historian added that "today's autocrats tell you what they're going to do."

Ben-Ghiat told Wallace, Ifill and Butler, "Trump is saying, very openly, that he admires dictators, Putin…. That's what he's saying that he wants for the U.S., and it's been a struggle to wake people up…. Donald Trump, far from being a clown or lazy, has been amazing at propagandizing and at being an authoritarian personality."

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The historian examined the history of authoritarianism in her 2021 book, "Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present," and she told the "Deadline: White House" panel that Trump "fits the personality profile of every leader in my book."

"These kinds of leaders aren't interested in governing," Ben-Ghiat warned. "They're interested in getting power and making money. And they don't recognize any difference between public and private. Everything is theirs for the taking."

Butler, meanwhile, pointed out that Trump's Christian nationalist followers view him as much more than a former president — they see him as "kind of a demigod."

The Penn professor/author observed, "He's not just a figure of popularity like you follow a movie star. He's much more than that to them."

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Watch the full video below or at this link.