[The Soup Nazi]

And now, from Zakaria's newsletter, a brief trip to HELL:

Warnings, From Trump and Others, About a Second Trump Term

Former US President Donald Trump is up to his old tricks, promising to turn the US into a dictatorship for only the first day of a second Trump presidency.

Given that Trump sought to retain power despite losing an election in 2020—and encouraged an armed mob to march on the US Capitol after the failure of other gambits, such as pressuring local officials to say the election was stolen; leaning on Vice President Mike Pence to nix the votes of two states; and reportedly considering replacing the acting US attorney general with an ally who would use the power of the Justice Department to undermine and perhaps overturn the election result, before senior department officials threatened to resign en masse if Trump did it—critics have no trouble believing him.

Not long before Trump’s comment, Washington Post editor-at-large Robert Kagan argued in a long and detailed essay that Americans may soon live under an actual Trump dictatorship.

“Can Trump win the election” in 2024? Kagan asked. “The answer, unless something radical and unforeseen happens, is: Of course he can. … If Trump does win the election, he will immediately become the most powerful person ever to hold (the presidency). … What limits (presidential) powers? The most obvious answer is the institutions of justice—all of which Trump, by his very election, will have defied and revealed as impotent. A court system that could not control Trump as a private individual is not going to control him better when he is president of the United States and appointing his own attorney general and all the other top officials at the Justice Department. Think of the power of a man who gets himself elected president despite indictments, courtroom appearances and perhaps even conviction? Would he even obey a directive of the Supreme Court? Or would he instead ask how many armored divisions the chief justice has?”

Given Trump’s recent and disturbing reference to his opponents as “vermin,” Kagan raised another dictatorial issue: the notion of Trump, once back in power, pursuing vendettas. “And who will stop the improper investigations and prosecutions of Trump’s many enemies?” Kagan asked. “Will Congress? ... Will Fox News defend them, or will it instead just amplify the accusations?”

In a follow-up essay this week, Kagan identified ways to avoid a Trump dictatorship, most notably anti-Trump Republicans siding with Democrats to vote against him in 2024, if Trump emerges as their party’s nominee. Seemingly less convinced Trump will win the GOP nomination, The Wall Street Journal argues in an editorial that opponents like Nikki Haley have a powerful argument against Trump in his own record.

Regardless of dictatorship fears, a second Trump term figures to be less restrained than the first. At CNN Opinion, historian and CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer identifies seven reasons why, including Trump’s survival of past impeachments and the likelihood that his Cabinet would be filled with inexperienced allies prone to saying “yes.” With Trump’s possible return looming, and with Ukraine aid held up amid partisan gridlock, Susan Glasser writes for The New Yorker that in Washington, a “true year-end panic has set in.” The Atlantic has published a full issue of staff reporting and analysis on the consequences of a Trump return to the White House. At The New York Times, Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haberman report rising fears that a second-term Trump will pull the US out of NATO, as the first-term Trump considered doing according to former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton.

The rest of the world must prepare now, writes Financial Times columnist Edward Luce, warning that a second-term Trump might disengage the US from the world, allowing Russia and China to advance their agendas and giving US allies like Japan, South Korea, and Australia reason to obtain nuclear weapons.