What would a 2024 presidency look like? You don’t have to guess - Trump is telling us loud and clear.

Jamelle Bouie in an opinion piece for the New York Times enumerates them:

• would purge the federal government of as many civil servants as possible.
• would install an army of political and ideological loyalists whose fealty to Trump’s interests would stand far and above their commitment to either the rule of law or the Constitution
• plans to turn the Department of Justice against his political opponents, prosecuting his critics and rivals
• pledges to root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American dream
• institute a program of mass detainment and deportation of undocumented immigrants
• “remove” homeless Americans and put them in tents on “large parcels of inexpensive land in the outer reaches of the cities"
• rid the United States of as many immigrants as possible, including a proposal to target people here legally — like green-card holders or people on student visas

Jamelle Bouie concludes:

Americans are obsessed with hidden meanings and secret revelations. This is why many of us are taken with the tell-all memoirs of political operatives or historical materials like the Nixon tapes. We often pay the most attention to those things that have been hidden from view. But the mundane truth of American politics is that much of what we want to know is in plain view. You don’t have to search hard or seek it out; you just have to listen.

And Donald Trump is telling us, loud and clear, that he wants to end American democracy as we know it.