Donald Trump is destroying democracy in real time.

He's attacking free speech, fair elections, and now he's even going after U.S. citizens.

Today's guest, Oregon, Senator Jeff Merkley, while he has spent his career fighting for democracy

and the institutions that make it strong.

He joins me to break down the strategies Trump is using to expand his authoritarian powers, how Trump is weaponizing

the justice system, packing the government with his loyalists, and trying to rig our elections.

But before we get into any of that, subscribe to this channel to stay informed about how you

can defend democracy. Senator Jeff Merkley, welcome to defending democracy.

Well, so good to be with you, Mark.

So, Senator, I wanted to have you on because you recently released a document about 10 strategies

Trump is using to entrench his power.

And so I wanted to kind of go into this with you and get your perspective as someone who's seen a lot of presidents of both parties who's worked with Republicans and Democrats to get meaningful legislation passed, kind of how you see the world as it shaping up.

Well, Mark, this project started because people tend to believe that democracies die when men with

guns storm a capital or the equivalent of a White House and so forth.

But over the last three decades, what we've really seen around the world is democracy

is dying because they're destroyed from the inside by an authoritarian president with

a rubber stamp Congress, with a deferential court, and here we are in

America with all three. So I went through a variety of the literature, including things like

on tyranny and how democracies die, and compiled kind of what were the strategies being used?

And that's those 10 rules of the authoritarian playbook. And then looked at, well,

is Trump using his rules? And it's turned out he's using all 10 of them. In other words,

it's a very comprehensive strategy to destroy the checks and balances of our constitution

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