'Damage will be done': NY Times writer warns of ominous future — even if Trump loses

Former President Donald Trump has already delivered a fatal blow to American democracy by training his MAGA minions in the "habits of autocracy," a new political analysis contends.

New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie Tuesday issued a dire warning about the underlying message of the Republican presidential candidate's false Hurricane Helene response claims — and future implications.

"Trump has successfully trained millions of Americans to think of the truth as an obstacle to winning power," Bouie wrote. "He may not be able to capitalize on that victory. Eventually, someone will."

The former president's and his running mate's various falsehoods — among them that Haitian immigrants eat cats and dogs and President Joe Biden's administration "stole" emergency funds — undermine the foundations of the U.S. political system, Bouie argued.

While Vance claimed he was justified in making up pet-eating stories to raise awareness about immigration, Bouie argued Tuesday he and Trump had made of MAGA followers a dangerous demand.

"To lie without shame about everything — even something as dire as a natural disaster — is to show contempt for the idea that you can reason with or persuade another person," Bouie wrote. "It is to demand obedience to a narrative. It is to cultivate the habits of autocracy."

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Bouie argued that the MAGA right's authoritarian habits undermine an important skill, centuries in the making, that protect American voters from the threat of authoritarianism.

"The discipline of democracy is meeting others as equals, fellow citizens with whom you can reason and deliberate," he concluded. "Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are doing whatever they can to destabilize the capacity of ordinary people to trust any information that comes their way."

Whether or not these tactics win Trump and Vance on Nov. 5 is irrelevant, Bouie concluded, because they've already paved the authoritarian's path to the White House.

"Trump and Vance might win the election with a message that is far more fantasy than it is reality," he wrote. "But whether they do or don’t triumph in the end, the damage will be done."