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Former President Donald Trump’s commanding lead in the Republican presidential primary is increasing Democratic and media warnings that Mr. Trump would become a dictator who abandons the Constitution in a second term.
The New York Times and The Washington Post have recently published articles previewing a Trump dictatorship. The Atlantic said this week that it would devote its January/February issue to articles forecasting Mr. Trump’s harmful impact on civil rights, the Justice Department, immigration and more if he is elected to the White House again.
Asked during a televised town hall event Tuesday whether he plans to become a dictator, Mr. Trump laughed off the suggestion.
“No, no, no — other than Day One,” he said. “We’re closing the border, and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.”
To many Republicans, Democrats’ latest line of attack is an effort to scare into action left-wing voters unenthusiastic about reelecting President Biden next year. More than half of Democratic voters want another candidate.
SEE ALSO: Schiff contends Trump wouldn’t leave office voluntarily if reelected
Republican Party strategist John Feehery, a partner at EFB Advocacy in Washington, said Democrats and media outlets are raising fears of a Trump dictatorship because “they think he is going to win and they are completely panicked.”
“I don’t know how somebody who doesn’t have functional control over the military or the intelligence community could possibly be a dictator,” he said. “[Democrats] don’t have deep faith in our constitutional framework, so they are projecting that lack of faith into Trump. I think it is ridiculous.”
Conservatives say the predictions of a dictatorship are reminiscent of the baseless accusations about Mr. Trump’s “collusion” with Russia in 2016.
“This is all the same ridiculous phony narrative from the same D.C. insiders who told us Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation,” pollster John McLaughlin, who has worked with the Trump campaign, told The Washington Times. “They lie. They cheat. They deceive. They are so corrupt. Joe Biden and his allies want to put his leading political opponent, President Trump, in jail on phony political charges. It’s un-American.
“The exploited men and women of America who are suffering from Joe Biden’s failures won’t be fooled again. Inflation is killing us. Illegals are pouring into the country. Crime is up. Terrorists attack Americans and our allies at will. This is why President Trump is beating Joe Biden in the polls,” he said.
Mr. Biden and his allies are stoking the fears about another Trump presidency. At a Democratic fundraiser in Boston on Tuesday, the president referred to The Atlantic’s upcoming issue on Mr. Trump and the warnings of former Rep. Liz Cheney, Wyoming Republican.
SEE ALSO: Trump counters Liz Cheney for her ‘unhinged statements’
“If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running,” Mr. Biden, 81, told Democratic donors. “But we cannot let him win for the sake of our country.”
Ms. Cheney said on NBC’s “Today” show this week that voters would be “naive” to think Mr. Trump would ever relinquish power if he wins a second term.
“A vote for Donald Trump may mean the last election that you ever get to vote in,” she said. “A vote for Donald Trump is a vote against the Constitution.”
Mr. Trump called his longtime opponent “unhinged.”
Democrats say rhetoric of retribution alarms them. Kash Patel, a top deputy in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under Mr. Trump, said this week that he and other Trump allies would seek payback in a second Trump administration against “deep state” actors and media members who facilitated the prosecutions of Mr. Trump and his supporters who protested at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The one thing we learned in the Trump administration, the first go-round, is we’ve got to put in [government] all American patriots, top to bottom,” Mr. Patel told podcast host Steve Bannon. “And we’ve got them for law enforcement. We got them for intel collection, we got them for offensive operations. We got them for DOD, CIA, everywhere. We will follow the facts and the law and go to courts of law and correct these justices and lawyers who have been prosecuting these cases based on politics. … We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media.
“Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. This is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators.”
Democrats say that sort of rhetoric proves their argument that Mr. Trump is eager to work outside the bounds of the Constitution.
“Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy,” Mr. Biden told campaign donors Tuesday. “To his supporters, he says … ‘I am your retribution.’”
The president said Mr. Trump encouraged supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and watched them threaten Vice President Mike Pence.
“And now the same man is promising to pardon those convicted felons and insurrectionists,” Mr. Biden said. “The same man who said it was time, and I quote, [for the] ‘termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution.’ He’s not saying this privately. He’s saying it publicly. He’s attracting supporters by this language.”
Mr. Biden was referring to a Truth Social post by Mr. Trump in December 2022.
“Now his supporters are saying he should invoke the Insurrection Act to use the military — the U.S. military domestically — [against] political opponents and in American cities,” the president said.
Democrats say Mr. Biden stands a better chance against Mr. Trump in 2024 if the campaign is waged as a battle for the future of democracy rather than making it a litmus test of Mr. Biden’s record.
“If I’m in the Biden campaign, I would say, ‘Bring it on,’” former Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield said on CNN. “This is bringing the fight to a place that is good for Joe Biden, that is about who’s protecting your freedoms, who’s protecting your rights.”
Trump campaign aides say the scare tactics are groundless and won’t work. Senior Trump adviser Jason Miller said, “It’s August 2016 all over again.
“Skyrocketing cost of health care has millions worried. President Trump’s Dem opponent off the campaign trail & hiding from the press,” he said on social media. “Dems & their media allies have given up on debating issues & have shifted to name-calling & rhetorical fearmongering.”
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again, said Democrats and media organizations are giving a preview of Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign next year.
“Their policies failed, so they’ll use fear to get votes by yelling Trump is a ‘dictator’ — as Biden tries to jail his opponent — the hallmark of an *actual* dictatorship,” she posted on X.
Mr. Trump is facing four criminal prosecutions, two of them brought by the Biden Justice Department. The criminal cases have not hampered the former president’s unrivaled status as the front-runner for the Republican nomination. The state contests begin with the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15.
Some conservatives say Democrats are playing a dangerous, irresponsible game by portraying Mr. Trump as a dictator-in-waiting. Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, wrote on X that the strategy “should probably be given the name ‘Assassination Prep.’”
Sen. J.D. Vance, Ohio Republican, said Trump opponents “need to take a chill pill.”
He added on social media, “All of these articles calling Trump a dictator are about one thing: legitimizing illegal and violent conduct as we get closer to the election.”
Donald Trump Jr. said The Atlantic and other media “are calling my father a dictator and trying to normalize violence against him and the MAGA base.”
Former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka commented on X, “If you call President Trump a future dictator, like Liz Cheney is doing here, what are you encouraging crazy Trump haters to do?”
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump says Mr. Biden is the one ruining democratic institutions.
“He’s been weaponizing government against his political opponents like a Third World political tyrant,” Mr. Trump said of the president at a campaign event last weekend in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Biden and his radical left allies like to pose as standing up as allies of democracy. Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy. Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy. It’s him and his people. They’re the wreckers of the American dream. The American dream is dead with them in office.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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