Ruth Ben-Ghiat

“Trump’s history of public admiration for Xi Jinping as a repressive ruler who may stay in office indefinitely sends a clear signal of approval for anything Xi does to show his strength, including any military action in Hong Kong.”

“Trump is turning American military might…,into a way to glorify himself and further an agenda which is seen as authoritarian.”

“Trump has to colonize everything…Any holiday, any civic ritual, becomes a Trump ritual.”

“Trump has created a corps of supporters fanatically loyal to him who turn his latest racist messages into group rituals (chants, slogans) and who hate the people he tells them to.”

“… authoritarians are continually testing the boundaries to see what they can get away with, and everything he does is a challenge to Democrats to mount some response against him,”

“Trump will become far more aggressive in the wake of the Mueller Report.”

“Now with Trump, he uses fascist tactics. One of them is the testing of the population, the media and the elites at the beginning. This is so key. There are many things Trump does that are fascistic without having to become a one-party state dictator.”

“Only certain people are America to Trump…he’s very purposefully shaping the image of American government to fit the white nationalist policy he believes in.”