What exactly will Trump do to end democracy?

[Anti-Trump Truth Socialite JD Vance Enjoying Juror]

I don’t know if he’s going to do anything like that, but some actions well-within the realm of possibility given his previous statements and actions could include:

1. Attempting to overturn the results of elections that his side loses. See his actions between Election Day and certification in 2021 for examples. Actions could include pressuring Secretaries of State, county boards of elections, or state legislatures to change vote totals or invalidate elections.

2. Abusing pardon power to remove punishments for people who attempt to overturn elections. He’s already planning on pardoning all of the “1/6 political prisoners” if he returns to power. Such actions could also be used to remove consequences for state and local officials who attempt to illegally influence elections.

3. Changing laws to eliminate or substantially skew elections. He couldn’t do this directly, but he could make a strong push for it as the resurgent leader of the party. In the 2020 election transition period there were efforts in some states to change state laws to allow state legislatures to appoint their own slates of pro-Trump electors. None of those efforts succeeded, but not for lack of trying on Trump’s side. Trying to bait a supreme court case on equal population districts would be another possibility. Democrats would hardly control a state legislature outside the northeast if state senates were elected on a county by county basis, regardless of the popular vote margin.

4. Removing all of the “sane” people who restricted his worst impulses during his first term. This is something that I don’t think people are considering. For the most part the “mainstream” Republicans went along with the president, but there were a few key times Trump was actually held back from carrying out his most insane ideas. Imagine, for example, if Kristi Noem was VP instead of Mike Pence. She would have unquestioningly gone along with Trump’s insane idea that the VP could unilaterally reject the slates of electors during certification. That would have precipitated a true constitutional crisis on January 6 with the VP refusing to properly preside over the counting as required.