This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

It's becoming clear that in recent days, President Trump has reached a new level of emboldenedment when it comes to his ongoing authoritarian takeover.

He's venting his rage at news organizations that displease him

and threatening government retribution against them. He's responded to multiple different

high-profile Democrats and politicians who criticized him by threatening to send troops to their

cities or unleashing state power against them in other ways.

There's a kind of brazenness to Trump's latest round of threats that crosses over into something new. Journalist and historian Garrett Graff has a great new piece on his substack,

Doomsday scenario, arguing that we really are seeing the advent of American fascism right before our

eyes. But critically, Garrett also explains that the process by which a transformation like

this takes place is incremental and often hard to recognize while it's happening with multiple

potential endpoints. So we're going to work through all this with him right now.

Garrett, thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me again, Greg.

I want to start with Trump's quote about the mayor of Washington, D.C.

He said this, quote,

Mayor Muriel Browser must immediately stop giving false and highly inaccurate crime figures

or bad things will happen,

including a complete and total federal takeover of the city, end quote.

Garrett, I want to stress here that Trump made this threat, the threat of a total federal

takeover of the city, against the will of its leaders and its residents in response to

speech, in response to her trying to inform constituents about the very thing he's lying

...