Thread by @brianklaas

Thread:

Trump’s Wannabe Despot Checklist
✓Call press “enemy of the people”
✓Scapegoat minorities
✓Call to jail political opponents
✓Pardon political allies
✓Lie constantly to erode public sense of objective truth
✓Appoint unqualified family members as top advisers

✓Use public office to secure lucrative business deals or trademarks for yourself and your family
✓Fire investigators *because* they are investigating you
✓Try to impose financial costs on the owners of newspapers that criticize you (Bezos)
✓Demand loyalty pledges

✓Appoint cronies (like the family wedding planner @LynnePatton) to top posts
✓Lie about ongoing investigations to confuse public opinion
✓Attack your Attorney General for properly recusing himself from an investigation
✓”Joke” about making yourself “president for life”

✓Uncritically praise and congratulate foreign despots (Putin, Erdogan, Xi, Duterte)
✓Eliminate the word “democracy” from the State Department mission statement
✓Try to organize a military parade to boost cult of personality
✓Fixate on “ratings” and “crowd size”

✓Float a plan to execute drug dealers
✓Retweet fake anti-Muslim videos from neo-fascists (“Britain First”)
✓Call those who march with neo-Nazis “very fine people”
✓Attack individual judges who rule against you but in accordance with rule of law
✓Spread conspiracy theories

✓Act as an apologist for a foreign despot who attacked the US with information warfare
✓Claim your political opponents are “treasonous” for not clapping enough during your speech
✓Hire an unregistered foreign agent who also got paid by the Kremlin as National Security Adviser

✓Refuse to divest from business interests that create massive conflicts of interest
✓Call to ban an entire religion from entering the country
✓Threaten to revoke media licenses from outlets that criticize you
✓Threaten to “open up” libel laws to chill legitimate criticism

✓Claim that any negative news, or any negative polls are “fake”
✓Discuss pardons with the lawyers for witnesses in an ongoing investigation into you & your campaign
✓Tweet a video of yourself beating up the likeness of a critical media outlet
✓Fabricate claims of voter fraud

✓Hold only one solo press conference in nearly 18 months
✓Grant interviews almost exclusively to sycophantic press outlets (Fox News)
✓Advocate for forced displays of patriotism (NFL, for example)

This is only a partial list. Democracy is under threat from a wannabe despot.