Donald Trump is leading us down a path of authoritarianism.

And today's guest, Steve Levitsky,

well, he has spent decades studying our country's slide

from democracy into authoritarian rule.

He's a Harvard professor and one of the world's

leading experts on democratic collapse.

And today, he's here to explain what authoritarianism

in America would actually look like,

what the Trump administration has already set in motion, and look like, what the Trump administration has

already set in motion, and most importantly, what we all can still do to stop our democracy

from dying. But before we get into it, subscribe to this channel to stay informed about how

you can defend democracy. Professor Steven Levinsky, welcome to defending democracy.

Thanks for having me, Mark. You are one of the world's leading authorities on democratic collapse, which I hate to say is a very pertinent topic for me and for the work I do and for many people in our audience.

So I think the place to start this in framing is where you see the United States today.

If healthy democracy is at one place, one end of the spectrum, and authoritarianism is

at the other end, like, how should people view where the U.S. is?

First of all, I mean, we need to put it in a little bit of perspective. Two things we know about democracies in general is that old democracies never die and rich democracies never die.

No democracy even remotely as rich as the United States has ever broken down in the history of the world.

And no democracy over the age of 50 has ever broken down.

So the United States should be safe.

And it has a lot of things going forward, which we can talk about.

But the level, the level of extreme polarization, the pretty dramatic erosion

...