'Why take the risk?' Historian predicts Trump second term would end U.S. democracy

Former President Donald Trump could outright end American democracy if elected to a second term, historian Jon Meacham warned on MSNBC Thursday.

This comes amid extensive reporting on Trump's allies' plans to reshape the government to give the next GOP president far greater power and an army of loyalists in the civil service — and Trump's own vow to be a dictator on day one of his presidency.

"Jon, how much of the question as you pose it this coming year will turn on what people believe to be true?" asked anchor Ari Melber.

"You know, he went on in that answer and immediately shifted the point to the unfolding wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine, as if that's what political violence is," said Meacham. "Warfare, what I think the host was asking there, was about domestic political violence in pursuit of a political agenda instead of the constitutionally sanctioned arena where we debate our differences peacefully, but passionately and we reach a given solution, and if you disagree, you organize, you campaign, you use the franchise in order to create a different result."

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"What political violence is about is undermining that, is replacing the rule of law with the rule of the merely strong," said Meacham. "The only thing I would say about the question about news sources and all that, I don't think a lot of people are confused. I just personally think they're wrong. They probably think I'm both. It's totally fair. One of the things I hope we can discuss and maybe come to in the next nine or ten months or so is replacing reflexive partisanship, my team right or wrong, with reflective partisanship. Partisanship is fine. Jefferson said people have divided themselves into parties since Rome. That's okay. The Constitution wouldn't work without them, as it turns out. Only voting because of a partisan label is, in fact, I believe, undermining of the spirit of the Constitution, the spirit of the Declaration of Independence."

"I'm lucky," he added. "I don't have particular passions about particular policy issues. I believe that — I do believe that this experiment needs to go on. I just worry — and I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am, given the evidence of the last almost ten years now — that a re-elected Trump would, not only damage that experiment, but he damn well might end it. I don't say that casually. I don't say that as a reflexive MSNBC thing. It's just, if you add up the facts, if you look at what we know, it's not an unreasonable worry. Why take the risk?"

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