Before Donald Trump was considered nothing more than a circus sideshow, some of us noted during the 2015 GOP presidential primaries that his rhetoric and agenda bore all the hallmarks of the "f" word: fascism. Historian Rick Perlstein wrestled with it as early as September of that year. I wrote about it just a couple of months later. At the time, Trump was extolling the virtues of torture, talking about a massive surveillance program to be used against American Muslims and promising to send Syrian refugees, including children, back to their war-torn country. He hadn't yet declared his intention to ban all Muslims from coming to the U.S. but it was easy to see the writing on the wall. It was also very easy to see that fascism was on the menu in the United States of America if Trump won the election

He may not have been fully able to accomplish his true desires in his first term since he was so unfamiliar with even the rudimentary levers of power but he's no longer afraid to go for it.

That was nine years ago and a zillions of words have since been written about Trump's dishonesty, corruption, unfitness and authoritarian philosophy. We've learned over the years, through many reports, memoirs and tell-all books that Trump tried to govern in a dictatorial fashion at every turn but was either too mentally undisciplined to follow through or was held back by people around him who kept him from acting on his worst impulses.

Trump's 2024 run includes a ratcheting up the fascist rhetoric to previously unseen heights. The former president repeatedly says that immigrants are "poisoning the blood" and calls his political opponents "vermin" and "enemies within" who must be purged.

Lately he's even suggested that he would call out the military against "the enemy from within.:

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Yet Trump has very little respect for the military either. The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg chronicled Trump's odd antipathy toward........

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