Believe Him./ By The Editorial Board New York Times

 

Believe Him.

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https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/25/opinion/what-trump-says.html

 

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

 

Donald Trump has described at length the dangerous and disturbing actions he says he will take if he wins the presidency.

 

His rallies offer a steady stream of such promises and threats — things like prosecuting political opponents and using the military against U.S. citizens. These statements are so outrageous and outlandish, so openly in conflict with the norms and values of American democracy that many find them hard to regard as anything but empty bluster.

 

We have two words for American voters: Believe him.

 

The record shows that Mr. Trump often pursues his stated goals, regardless of how plainly they lack legal or moral grounding. The record further shows that many of his most reckless efforts in his first administration were stymied only because of others in his administration who blocked, delayed or watered down his aims to ensure that he could not put himself above the law or the country. Mr. Trump has learned from that experience to surround himself with supplicants who would instead obey his wishes and bring his words and ideas to life even if they contradict facts, the public interest or the Constitution.

 

For this reason, Americans would be wise to see this language as a genuine threat, not simply Mr. Trump on a tangent. We should take the painful step of imagining America were his plans and promises to come to pass, to imagine the impacts to our culture, to our economy, to our security, to our shared commitment to the rule of law.

 

The promises Mr. Trump made during his first presidential campaign, in 2016, turned out to be a pretty good road map of the policies and priorities he pursued as president. Today he says he is ready to deploy the military against his political opponents. He says that he will instruct the Justice Department to prosecute critics. He says that he will mobilize the National Guard to deport immigrants, that he is ready to blow Iranian cities to smithereens, that he will allow vigilante violence as a solution to crime in America.

 

Americans should believe him.