(Dobbs) "One election away from the extinction of our democracy as we know it.”

We don't prosecute for being a menace. We prosecute for being a criminal.

With today as the third anniversary of the insurrection at the Capitol, and with the first presidential contest only a week away, it’s time to double down on the danger that faces us. That danger is Donald Trump. If you’re not one of his acolytes, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know but it can’t be said too often: Donald Trump is a menace. He’s a menace to everything from honesty to decency to democracy.

We can expect Joe Biden to call him a “despicable” danger to democracy as he did at his official campaign kickoff yesterday. He’ll likely face Trump in November. But when it comes to framing the threat of Donald Trump, Biden’s not alone. As Dan Rather wrote last month here on Substack, “Gorged on ego and hellbent on avoiding prison, he careens across our country with no regard for the stability of our republic. He traffics in lies and hatred. He thrives on threats of violence.”

We’ve seen all that since he ran the first time for president. But in the last few months, bidding for the adoration and assets of his supporters, the menace has gotten even worse. As columnist Michelle Goldberg summed it up in The New York Times, “The ex-president’s rhetoric is increasingly Hitlerian; he’s repeatedly said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of our country, language that echoes Mein Kampf. He approvingly quoted Vladimir Putin about the ‘rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy,’ and he has said he wants to be a dictator on the first day of a second presidency.” 

On top of that, he also echoes Hitler when he calls the political opposition “vermin.” He has promised his people, “I will be your retribution.” He has pledged a chilling attack on the media, writing on his website, “When I WIN the Presidency of the United States… the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events.” He has openly proposed to prosecute his opponents and says he’ll pardon many of the insurrectionists from January 6th. And in a Christmas message that only a narcissist like Trump could deliver, he called his political enemies “deranged” and “evil” and wrote, “MAY THEY ROT IN HELL.” And, oh yeah, in the spirit of the holiday, he added, “MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

If Trump gets the chance, his “Day One” dictatorship will last more than a day. Especially if he gets back to the White House and his MAGA movement holds control of Congress. It already has ensnared the leadership: as of last week, all four of the top leaders of the GOP in the House have endorsed Trump for president. The cult is complete.

If Trump gets the chance, his dictatorship will haunt us for four years. At least.

Here’s only the most recent example of the kind of peril we’re talking about. When Maine’s secretary of state ruled after a week-long hearing that Trump shouldn’t be on the primary ballot, this sore loser who tried to steal the 2020 election had the shameless gall to pretend that it’s the Democrats who are the real threat: “We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter.” He had previously condemned the decision to disqualify him by Colorado’s Supreme Court the same way, on which the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday agreed to rule.

Where does this kind of incendiary rhetoric lead? To threats against Colorado’s justices and Maine’s secretary of state. Threats that are encouraged, maybe inspired, by Trump’s audacious and open contempt for our system of justice. One post on a far-right website said, “All f— robed rats must f— hang.”

These are the people who worry me most. The insurrectionists of January 6th were only the leading edge. In an astonishing mid-December poll by Fox News, Republicans were asked if “we need a president willing to break some rules and laws to set things right?” and three out of ten said yes, we do want a president who will break the law. Meantime, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found that a full third of Republican voters, no longer wedded to reality, now say that Joe Biden is not our legitimate president, and that “Republicans are more sympathetic to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol and more likely to absolve Donald Trump of responsibility for the attack than they were in 2021.”

Four more years? If he gets what he wants, these are the menaces we will face.

The mystery to me is, how can so many Americans, tens of millions, accept this? How can they suspend reality as they have? How can they ignore the supportable foundations of two impeachments, 91 criminal charges, and a growing number of legitimate challenges to his right to even run again, based on his role in the insurrection three years ago? I’ve read the analyses by experts about his supporters’ grievances against the system, about their discontent with the status quo, about their distrust of the establishment. But look at the man who promises to make it all right. How can they let a menace like this— blatantly indecent, dishonest, mean and immoral, a man who trashes domestic rivals but praises ruthless dictators— end up as their leader?

Writers who focus on democracy have put up the warning flags. Bob Woodward said on MSNBC, “The problem with Trump is, I think, he looks at democracy as enemy territory… because that's the people, and he always wants it to be about him.” Robert Kagan wrote in The Washington Post, “There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day,” and if it does happen, he continued, “Americans’ rights will be conditional rather than guaranteed.” Correspondent David Andelman wrote on Substack, “That the Republican Party would nominate a man who tried to overturn the results of the previous presidential election dims America as a democratic beacon.” In his “Mort Report,” journalist Mort Rosenblum put it plainly: “Federal accommodations that might await him cannot legally include the White House.”

Maybe the most point-blank warning of them all came last week when Harry Dunn, a Capitol police officer who was attacked on January 6th and won the Congressional Gold Medal for his valor, professed, “It’s no exaggeration to say we are one election away from the extinction of our democracy as we know it right now.”

But none of that, none of it, justifies efforts to put Trump on trial this year to face 91 criminal charges, or to keep his name off anyone’s ballot. That’s because we don’t prosecute people because of what they might do. We prosecute them for what they’ve already done. It’s what Trump already has done— the insurrection he incited, the menace he already has created— that justifies it.

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.