Stopping Trump’s Dictatorship Is a Vital Message—and a Winning One

But those of us in the anti-Trump camp must do a better job of collectively telling a single story. The Democratic Party should name members who specifically focus on Trump’s dictatorial tendencies. I would love to see a well-respected figure not formally associated with the Democratic Party designated as a lead spokesperson for the anti-authoritarian movement, amplifying all the great work activists are doing to confront Trump. (Sherrilynn Ifill, former president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Found, would be an ideal choice.) 

News outlets not committed to a both-sides approach can orient their coverage around the potential of dictatorship in America. I worry that MSNBC, which is now separating from NBC, is missing an opportunity to remake itself into the kind of news outlet that the United States needs in 2025. The network seems to be leaning into covering incremental events and breaking news without much context (its new name will be MS Now) and is creating a traditional D.C. bureau that seems fairly similar to those of outlets like CNN. It would be better if the network put a set of reporters on the authoritarianism beat in addition to the ones covering Capitol Hill and the White House. 

“Journalism is a curriculum of everything that happens in the world on a single day or in an hour,” said Kathy Roberts Forde, a journalism historian at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in a recent episode of TNR’s Right Now, the Substack video series I host. “What’s often missed are these kinds of syntheses and putting them together and telling us, ‘We reported on these 25 things that happened this week in Washington, these 25 things that happened at the state level.… Let’s put this together for you and show you a pattern.’ We need that ambition in our journalism.”