Fascism expert explains how Trump is following the playbook to destroy America before leaving office

President Donald Trump is making several moves ahead of leaving office on Jan. 20, 2021, to destroy President-elect Joe Biden's term in office, historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat explained in part of a video series Sunday.

Ben-Ghiat explained that she started the series of videos because she knew that Trump would try to cause as much destruction as possible before officially leaving office.

She cited a story by New York Times reporter Michael Shear, making it clear that Trump is using his final days to make Biden's life impossible.

"Watch very carefully what Trump and the GOP are doing right now," she instructed. "These end-stage follies, as I can them, are revealing. They're trying to loot and plunder the Earth. They're trying to rush through oil drilling leases in Alaska. They're trying to make sure their secrets are kept, and they're trying to make the world as unsafe as possible so that Biden will have difficulty restablizing foreign relations."

She said that it's akin to former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet, who had a year before he had to be out of office. That year, he worked to damage the incoming democracy, which was Chile's first after Pinochet's junta took over 17 years before. He worked to keep human rights violations secret, made it impossible to purge staff he installed, and stacked the courts.

In his book, Pinochet alleged the democracy was all a conspiracy against him.

It sounds eerily familiar.

See the video from Ben-Ghiat below: