Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, Domestic Policy Advisor John Ehrlichman, White House Counsel John Dean, Attorney General John Mitchell, and Special Counsel Charles Colson all did time. So did several members of Nixonâs Committee to Re-Elect the President, better known as CREEP, for their crimes of burglary, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy. Nixon escaped accountability only because Gerald Ford pardoned him.
That experience left a permanent scar on Americaâs political consciousness, but it also left a roadmap that Trump and his inner circle are determined not to follow. They have no intention of being, like Nixon and his people, crooks who lost their grip on power. Theyâre apparently making plans to guarantee it never happens to them.
Thatâs the context for Trumpâs recent announcement that he intends to issue an executive order directing states to defer to him in âcounting and tabulating votes.â Heâs laying the groundwork to seize control of the elections in 2026 and 2028, turning them into stage-managed rituals rather than contests.
This isnât bluster on Trumpâs part. Itâs the natural progression of what Republicans have already been doing with their gerrymandering binge, redrawing district lines to ensure that even if they lose the majority of votes, they can still control the House of Representatives. The game is to rig the system so thoroughly that the peopleâs will can no longer threaten their grip on power, that Democrats in Congress will never be able to investigate their abuse of our system like they did with Nixon.
What Nixon tried to do in secret with plumbers, burglars, and hush money, Trump is doing in the open, loudly, and with the full backing of the Republican Party and its billionaire benefactors.
The danger of this moment is that history shows how difficult it is to remove authoritarian leaders once theyâve succeeded in consolidating control.
Fascists are not like ordinary politicians. They donât lose gracefully. They donât respect rules, laws, or constitutions except insofar as they can be bent to entrench their power. As Chris Armitage writes, once in, theyâre damn hard to get out.
Mussolini stayed in power for more than two decades until the Second World War turned against him. Franco held Spain in his iron grip for almost 40 years (and theyâre still finding bodies). Hitlerâs regime collapsed only after catastrophic defeat and the near destruction of Germany.
These men understood that once you have bent the legal system to your will, crushed independent journalism, cowed the opposition, and taught the public to accept corruption as normal, thereâs no easy way for citizens to push you out.
And yet authoritarian regimes do fall.
Sometimes it happens through elite defections, like the Italian monarchy finally turning against Mussolini in 1943. Sometimes it happens through the pressure of outside forces, as with Vichy France collapsing under the weight of Allied liberation.
More often, though, it happens when the people themselves rise up in massive, sustained, nonviolent resistance.
The Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014 showed what it looks like when citizens refuse to accept a corrupt authoritarian order. Hundreds of thousands filled the streets of Kyiv through a freezing winter, enduring beatings, arrests, and even killings. Yet they would not leave until Ukraineâs then-President (and Putin toady) Viktor Yanukovych fled the country.
The lesson was stark: even the most entrenched regime can crumble when confronted with organized, courageous defiance.
History is filled with similar examples, from the Solidarity movement in Poland to the fall of dictators across Eastern Europe in 1989. More recently, mass movements in South Korea forced the removal of President Park Geun-hye in 2017 despite her control over the levers of power, and again last year when President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law.
The thread running through all of these cases is that once fascists or would-be dictators gain the upper hand, it isnât enough to hope theyâll obey laws or lose elections. By design, they manipulate the system to make losing impossible. Itâs the one thing thatâs so common among them that itâs predictable.
Trump understands this better than anyone, as I lay out in my new book, The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink. Thatâs why he is not just talking about seizing control of vote counting but is also working with Republican-controlled states to purge voter rolls, limit ballot access, and criminalize voter registration drives.
Itâs why Republican governors are signing laws that let them override election boards and install partisan hacks in their place.
Itâs why the neofascist right is pouring money into think tanks and dark-money operations that map out every legal loophole that can be weaponized against democracy.
Their strategy is to make resistance look futile by presenting their power as inevitable.
We must not let them succeed in that psychological warfare.
Resistance is not futile, but it does require seriousness, preparation, and courage. Trump and the GOP arenât hiding their goals. Theyâre trying to seize control not just of elections but of the press, with constant attacks on independent media and regulatory approval of growing consolidation of news outlets into the hands of friendly oligarchs.
Theyâre targeting the legal profession, purging government of independent lawyers and bureaucrats, stacking the courts with partisans, and threatening judges and law firms who resist them.
Theyâre even drawing up lists of corporations deemed âfriendlyâ or âunfriendlyâ to the administration, a tactic straight out of Putinâs authoritarian playbook. And with the Bolton raid, it appears theyâre imitating Putinâs purges of âdisloyalâ former aides.
If you reward the loyal and punish the defiant, you create a political landscape and an economy that bend themselves to political power rather than to the rule of law, and it appears that is their explicit goal.
This is how democracies typically collapse, not with a single dramatic coup but through a steady tightening of control by elected officials until ordinary people feel they have no voice left.
The warning lights are flashing. Trump is telling us openly what he intends to do. The Republican Party is showing us in every state where it holds power what the model will look like.
Their gerrymanders, their purges, their threats to the media and the courts, their talk of âfriendlyâ corporations: itâs all of a piece. They learned from Nixon that getting caught is dangerous. They intend to make sure they never get caught because theyâll write the rules themselves so theyâre never out of power.
The only counterweight is we, the people. History shows that nonviolent resistance, when massive and sustained, is more effective than violence at bringing down tyrannies. But it requires solidarity, discipline, and an unshakable commitment to the idea that no one man is above the law.
We must be preparing now for the possibility that the 2026 and 2028 elections will not be free and fair. Itâs time to build networks, coalitions, and organizations capable of bringing millions into the streets, of challenging illegitimate actions in courts, of protecting the few independent institutions that remain.
We must be telling the truth, loudly and constantly, about what is happening, so that average Americans donât wake up one morning to find that democracy has been stolen while they slept.
This is not alarmism. Itâs the plain reading of Trumpâs own words and the GOPâs own actions.
The lesson of Nixon is that corrupt men in power will always push as far as they can get away with.
The lesson of Trump is that he has no intention of ever being forced into exile, prison, or disgrace.
The lesson of history is that once fascists take control, they will never leave voluntarily.
The lesson of the Maidan, and of countless other peopleâs movements, is that fascists like Trump and his ass-kissing cabinet can be defeated if enough of us are willing to stand up together.
The hour is late, but itâs not yet too late. If we take seriously what Trump and the Republican Party are telling us, if we organize and resist, if we insist on truth, solidarity, and democracy, then the future can still be Americaâs to win, reclaiming the vision of our founders and the freedom that generations of Americans have fought and died to keep.
If we donât, weâll live under the iron rule of men who have studied Nixonâs downfall and resolved never to repeat his mistakes even as they double down on his corruption of government to persecute his enemies and consolidate power. The choice is ours, and the time to make it is now.
