A former top Republican strategist is repeating his warnings about the nation’s slide towards autocracy under former President Donald Trump and today’s GOP.
Stuart Stevens appeared on MSNBC Sunday to discuss an op-ed written by three conservative attorneys that was published last week in The New York Times. It warned that the “Trump threat is growing,” and called for those in the legal profession to rise to the moment and protect democracy.
“When White House lawyers are inventing cockamamie theories to stop the peaceful transition of power and copping pleas to avoid jail time, it’s clear that we in the legal profession have come to a crisis point,” the authors wrote.
Stevens said those who helped legitimize fringe legal theories “are people who have decided that democracy is the enemy because they’re not able to win elections in a changing America.”
Pointing to Trump’s largely white voting bloc in an increasingly diverse nation, Stevens said the Republican Party has failed to appeal to nonwhite voters in large numbers, so “their answer is to curate the vote.”
“That’s really what they’re doing, and it’s … a classic step in how democracies slide into autocracy,” he said. “These are dangerous people. They’re very smart, they’re competent, they’re well financed, and they are absolutely convinced that they are going to win.”
Despite facing 91 felony counts under four criminal indictments, including for his attempted coup, as well as being found liable for sexual abuse and fraud in New York, Trump continues to keep the support of elected Republicans, and leads the pack for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination by a wide margin.
Authoritarianism experts around the world have been warning with increasing urgency that a second Trump administration would have devastating effects on American democracy, amid reports about the former president’s plans for an even more extreme agenda.
Stevens is author of the book “The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy,” and served as a top adviser to Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) during the 2012 presidential race.
You can watch the interview on MSNBC below.
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