Previously on the daily.

We didn't want this to be some fan fiction sitting around, you know, smoking a pipe trying to imagine what a second term of Trump would look like.

We want it to be rooted in real reporting and back in April we introduced a series

focused on what a second Trump presidency would look like and what it would mean for American

democracy. It's too much to say it's the end of democracy per se. It's American style

democracy. In part one, my colleagues Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage,

and Maggie Haberman explained how in his first term Trump encountered

government systems and personnel that had blocked the most extreme

parts of his agenda and left Trump determined to remove those obstacles if re-elected.

We focused very intently on things that Donald Trump himself cares about,

and at the heart of that is power.

In order to do that, they found. power.

In order to do that, they found, Trump plans to systematically weed out federal workers at all

levels who would stand in his way. take control of agencies that have long operated

independently and use the Department of Justice to punish his enemies. The result would be a presidency with few constraints on its power.

Today, part two of our series, Trump's message.

Charlie, we are here at the Republican National Convention on the eve of the

speech in which Donald Trump is going to formally accept his party's

nomination and you and I had been working on an episode about Trump's campaign

message for this series that the Daily's been doing about what a second Trump term would be like,

and candidly we thought we were done with the episode.

And then, while Trump was out on the campaign trail,

...