While President Donald Trump's popularity is slipping in the polls, Financial Times columnist Edward Luce does not think it's time for Democrats to just sit back in watch him fail.
The reason for this, he writes, is that a flailing Trump could still work to assert total control of the American government.
"The worse things go for him in politics as it is meant to be played, the likelier he is to rip up the rule book," he warns. "The risk that Trump will take America across the line into autocracy looks more like 50:50."
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Luce then recounts in the past brushing aside fears that Trump could become a dictator because he didn't try to seize control of the leadership of the United States military.
At the start of Trump's second term, however, Luce notes that "within a month, he decapitated each of the state’s repressive organs and put loyalists in their place" and "last Friday, he purged the top levels of the Pentagon."
He then recalls that Trump during his first term ordered the military to open fire on American citizens who were protesting against police brutality, only for those orders to go unheeded because his subordinates at the time wouldn't carry them out.
With an administration stacked with nothing but loyalists, however, Luce believes all bets are off.
"When things go wrong, Trump will be tempted to cross the point of no return," he forebodingly concludes.