The One Way History Shows Trump’s Personality Cult Will End

Is it fair to think that Trump is more of an autocrat than DeSantis is?

There are limits to the comparison because Trump is an autocratic individual. He has surrounded himself with people who have decades of experience helping and working for dictators, from Paul and Roger Stone to Steve and Steve's father. They are on a crusade to ruin democracy. There was a different career path for DeSantis. What is notable about him is that he knows what kind of leader you need to seem to be in today's GOP. You need to turn citizens against each other, which he does with the "Don't Say Gay" bill. You can call the election security office to report people doing bad things. These are things that match up with autocratic policies. He is a very capable student of what will work in the GOP and electorate.

Is Ron DeSantis doing this in the most stark, arguably most effective way, or are there others that you are paying attention to?

Ben-Ghiat: There are many others. Greg Abbott stands out in terms of his policies. He posed for a picture with his target sheet and joked about shooting journalists during the Trump years. One is that Ron has made clear his desire to national leadership, and the other is that he is smooth. You don't hear about poisoning, you don't hear about people falling out of windows, but Orb is a more palatable Putin. He is younger and has a smooth skin. He is more measured in what he says. He trained as a lawyer. Trump is a much more outrageous personality and that is the source of his charisma. He relates to audiences that he likes.

Is the United States of America still a full democracy?

Ben-Ghiat said it was deceptive because Trump did a lot of damage. He was there because of that. He was there to destroy our democracy. He was voted out. In the middle of the Pandemic, 80 million people turned out to get rid of him. It's rare to interrupt an autocratic personality in the middle of his project. Individual states are continuing this. They are continuing it in a very rapid fashion.

The midterms are very close. If the Republicans capture Congress, you have to assume the worst with people who have been very open about wanting to wreck democracy. Making Trump speaker of the House is one of the scary things that they float. The people have left democracy and nothing is off the table. It is very ominous that he established this office of election security. It is very bad because it has its own prosecutors, and it makes things that are a felony. It is an intimidation machine if you look at the details. The idea of election integrity is a very anti-democratic thing, because it has prosecutorial powers, it has informed mechanisms, and it has a tip line, which means how are we going to start making elections come out the way we need to?

I heard the answer to the question, "Is America still a full democracy?", maybe not.

Ben-Ghiat: No. Many states are no longer functioning democracies according to David Pepper. We are a functioning democracy. That is how we got rid of Trump. The system has been eroded and many states are changing over time. In Hungary, the system developed by Viktor Orbenau is almost impossible for the opposition to win.

Is it fair to say that the U.S. is neither completely democratic nor completely autocratic?

It is in a transition. I believe it's important to never fall into fatalism. I think it's my job to warn people about what could happen, but it's important that I keep doing that.

There is increasing talk of civil war. Civil wars don't happen in full democracies. Civil wars don't happen in autocracies, right? Those places that are in a worrying state of transition might be vulnerable to that kind of violence. Are we about to go to war?

Ben-Ghiat believes that the possibility of a civil war is not likely. It is something that the Republicans want us to think is happening, and they use that to get people on their side as armed up as possible, as weaponized, as fearful as possible. I don't think we would fall into that state. You fall into a system where your vote doesn't mean much if the Republicans win. I think there will be another round of protests. There are often protests around an event. The Women's March was the shock of Trump's election. George Floyd sparked the Black Lives Matter protests. Barbara Walter wrote a book about the likelihood of civil war and I respect her a lot. Extremist Republicans are the ones who really want a civil war. Civil war is bad for business. Civil war is bad for your health. It is bad for the nation. It is a scare talking point.

Thomas Homer-Dixon, a scholar who studies violent conflict, recently wrote that American democracy could collapse by 2025. If not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.

Ben-Ghiat thinks it could happen in a quieter way. There would be protests if the Republicans tried to impeach Biden and Harris. First of all, whether that becomes a civil war is very different because it is only one side which is armed. Walter is correct. She wanted to know how far our democracy has fallen. It is possible that we could end up with a form of autocracy because of the assaults on our electoral system. From his own point of view, Bannon has been working very hard at this. It's intimidation of voters, removing voters, threats to election officials, so you get them out of the system, which is what we callcratic capture. This is what I mean by legalistic and quieter. That doesn't bring people into the streets. It is an evolution and it is happening slowly, slowly, and big protests are occasioned by an event.

There are signs of an American style of autocracy.

The wild card is guns. In peace time, no other country has more guns in private hands. There are so many extremists in the military that it matters, and no other country in peacetime has militias allowed to populate. What is going to bring out a massive protest if January 6 didn't happen? There were groups of people who were not associated with any Proud Boys or radical groups. Robert Pape called them middle-aged, middle class, but they were all armed. They showed up on January 6 with private weapons. The wild card is that. That violence, that the population believes it has the right to rebel against, is extremely American. The Second Amendment is more than just about hunting. The idea of Biden as a dictator is back. It only works if your citizens are armed and you are the only country in the world that is.

What are Democrats doing wrong right now?

Ben-Ghiat said that Trump and his allies were able to shift the political culture because they imposed an authoritarian party culture. Small variations are needed for propaganda to be repeated. You can tell when the various talking points come up because they are echoed by all the lawmakers and throughout Fox. Democrats are not going to impose unified messaging. Democrats don't have that force of concentration of message, repetition, and that's a failing in this environment.