One persistent theme coming from the Democrats is that Trump, if elected a second time, would become a dictator and end democracy. For eight years, critics have called Trump an autocrat and likened him to the despised autocrats of the twentieth century, from Mussolini to Hitler. This rhetorical extremism is odd: Reagan and Bush were despised by Democrats, but they were not generally portrayed as threats to democracy. Nor have these accusations gone away; if anything, they are more intense now than in 2015 when they first surfaced.

It is one thing to say that Trump will do this, and will do that, if we have not already had Trump in office to see what he did in fact do. Trump’s critics latch on to his phrases like “dictator for a day,” which are quite obviously intended jokingly, or at least half-jokingly, and they say: Aha! He even admits he’s going to be like Hitler. But Hitler proceeded, almost immediately upon his assumption of power in 1933, to institute a widespread regime of repression. Hitler didn’t govern in a normal way for a term, and then somehow metamorphose into a dictator the second time around.

My premise is that actions speak louder than words, and we can make a sound judgement about Trump by considering his conduct from the time he entered........

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