Panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" agreed President Donald Trump showed signs of becoming an autocrat, but they're so far encouraged by the resilience of democratic institutions.
Host Joe Scarborough welcomed back author Anand Giridharadas to the show, a little more than a year after the two sparred over how worrisome the Trump presidency would be.
Last year, Scarborough called Giridharadas "hysterical" for admitting he felt "physical fear" of a Trump administration -- but the pair found much to agree about 11 months into this presidency.
"I never imagined it would be as bad as it is," Scarborough said.
The host said he was correct in predicting democratic institutions would hold, but he conceded Giridharadas was right to worry about the constant onslaught against those institutions and other checks on Trump's authority.
"Anand, that's what autocrats do -- it's the big lie, the constant lie," Scarborough said, referring to Trump and his right-wing media allies. "It's the numbing of the people. You keep telling lies long enough, pretty soon they can't discern between truths and lies."
Scarborough suggested he was worried that Republicans would not care enough to hold anyone accountable, even if the special counsel probe proved campaign collusion.
"I don't think Bob Mueller is being attacked now to be fired," he said. "I think they are throwing so many lies at Mueller and so much against the wall, they just want to bring his support down so when the indictments continue, then he'll be discredited."
Giridharadas put the lies into another context, also indicative of authoritarian rule.
"I think one of the most important words to describe what we have lived through this year is this idea of gaslighting, which is a form of psychological abuse in which someone makes you not trust your own grasp on reality in small ways, so when they want to come for the big lie, you don't really understand what's going on anymore," Giridharadas said.
The author hoped Americans would commit to one another next year, rather than submit to their divisions.
"I am haunted by the thought that a Russian colonel somewhere made the correct assessment that we hated each other so much that a simple Twitter and Facebook jamming operation could tear this country apart," Giridharadas said. "We need to make ourselves, in spite of all of this, one people again who disagree, who argue, but are not so easily ripped apart."
MSNBC contributor Donny Deutsch said the disinformation campaign employed against Americans reminded him of the old "Twilight Zone" episode, "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."
"Basically, it sets up a town where Martians or people from another planet land, and all they have to do is screw with the electricity and the lights in the neighborhood, and they make people turn on each other," Deutsch said. "It was a really stunning precursor to what's going on."
"America, don't let yourself become 'The Twilight Zone,'" Giridharadas said.