Could Trump really ‘end democracy?’

At The Washington Post, Isaac Arnsdorf covers Donald Trump and the MAGA movement from the grassroots up. Ideas that sound odd or unworkable to elite Republicans — a “precinct committeeman” strategy? Purging Ronna McDaniel? — make sense to the activists he talks to. And for the last three years, they’ve kept Trump in control of the GOP, replacing the ex-president’s enemies and signing up for every kind of electoral work. In “Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy,” Arnsdorf tells this story from the moment Trump left office to the week that Steve Bannon’s “War Room” army helped replace the Speaker of the House. This is an edited transcript of our conversation about it.

Americana: Can you define what you mean by “ending democracy?” If this movement is successful, what changes about our democracy?

Isaac Arnsdorf: That language is very much a part of the movement. Sometimes, you hear it in terms like “this is not really a democracy, it’s a republic.” But you also have people who don’t think of themselves as being anti-democratic, and believe democracy actually failed when the election was stolen from Trump. And Trump himself is trying to turn this around by accusing Biden of being a threat to democracy.

We’ve never heard Trump say that he will accept the outcome of an election if it doesn’t go his way. That goes all the way back to 2016. And we’ve never heard Trump disavow violence. The way that [political scientist] Adam Przeworski put it is that democracy is a system where parties lose elections. What does that mean? Lots of countries have elections that are not free and fair, and the party in power can’t lose. If Trump does win in November — and he absolutely could win a free and fair election — he and the people around him, who’d return to the administration with him, would be much more determined to consolidate power. They would make it harder for them to ever be dislodged.

Americana: Steve Bannon talks about re-making the Republican Party into a populist party that will win for 100 years. Is he talking about some situation, like in Japan, where elections are fair but one party is so dominant that it almost always wins? Or something else?

Isaac Arnsdorf: There’s some ambiguity there, which I think is intentional. Bannon is saying that if you kind of unleash the power of MAGA nationalism, you could have a majority coalition forever. But at the same time, he’s saying Trump didn’t lose when he really did lose — the voting machines are corrupt, and we have to have paper ballots with no early voting. Tactically, a lot of what’s driving that movement is being focused on changing the rules to make sure that the other side can’t win.

Americana: So what would that mean in practice? How does democracy change if Trump wins and implements these ideas?

Isaac Arnsdorf: This was sort of the Chekhov’s gun of 2020, taken off the wall and put down on the table. The post-election legal process exposed all the soft spots in the electoral system. Trump and his campaign and his lawyers were not able to successfully exploit them, because they got there too late, or they didn’t have their act together, and a handful of Republicans didn’t go along with it. And the book covers this effort of purging and purifying the party to make sure that there wouldn’t be uncooperative Republicans like that in the future. But it also looks at ways that activists got involved earlier in the process, when the ballots are actually being cast and counted, not just when they’re being certified. Right now, you have a lot more Republican investment in scrutinizing voter rolls and deploying poll observers, with the stated purpose of collecting evidence that can be used to challenge the results.

Americana: How does the experience of 2022 affect this movement? There’s a lot of success, in the run-up to the midterms, of winning precinct committee jobs and changing election laws. And then Republicans do pretty poorly under those rules, in those conditions.

Isaac Arnsdorf: It doesn’t change things as much as you might expect. It’s funny, both the MAGA Republicans and the non-MAGA traditional Republicans agree that Republicans underperformed in the midterms for the same reason: The non-MAGA Republicans rejected the MAGA candidates. They just disagree about who’s wrong and who needs to cave. It did cause an acknowledgment on the MAGA side that only voting in person, on Election Day, is not great tactically, because you’re going up against Democrats who are using early and mail voting that’s much more convenient. So, Republicans are now in this awkward position of trying to message, “Hey, we hate early voting and mail voting, and we want to get rid of it, and we don’t trust it, and we need to use it where it exists so that we can beat the Democrats.”

Americana: That was Ronna McDaniel’s message, and the movement got rid of her. Do the people you covered see that as a win?

Isaac Arnsdorf: They consider that a total victory. It’s not a stretch to say that a coordinated nationwide campaign to start at the bottom of the party ladder and work your way up to get new leadership resulted in new leadership, in just a few years. You’ve got to give some credit where credit is due.

The MAGA alternative-media ecosystem has also really matured in the past several years. Actually, being de-platformed by the major social networks, and being kind of shunned by major media organizations for a time, kind of helped it grow. Bannon became the sun of that solar system, especially in early 2021 when Trump was laying low. And you see this at Trump rallies. People will jeer at the TV cameras and the press pen until they see Right Side Broadcasting, and then they want to come over and get a picture with [RSB host] Brian Glenn. You see a development of alternative information sources that are considered valid within the movement, plus an overall mistrust in everything else.

Americana: Bannon talks a lot about “Bowling Alone,” and social cohesion, and how we’ve lost it. What meaning do these activists find in their lives from being involved?

Isaac Arnsdorf: Being active in the MAGA movement has taken the place of those more old-fashioned community bonds, like the Rotary Club. I’ve talked to people at Trump rallies who describe it as their church, as a religious experience. I’ve talked to a few activists who became part of this post-2020 wave of joining the party, who say how they never made so many friends so quickly in their lives. Coming out of the isolation of the pandemic, that formation of community becomes a formation of identity. And that’s an extremely powerful force in politics that Bannon is very intentional about using to motivate people.

Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans have picked up on that, too. The messaging that they developed, tested, and had a lot of success with in the midterms was built around authentic messengers: Republicans, people who consider themselves Republicans, for whom it’s important to think of themselves as Republicans, who just couldn’t stand the Republicans on the ballot in 2022. That’s going to be a big part of the strategy to defeat Trump in 2024.