A little over a week into Donald Trump’s presidency and journalists are ready to suggest he is a fascist dictator.
The cover story for the upcoming issue of The Atlantic is “How to Build an Autocracy.” In it David Frum compares Trump to a Latin American despot, writing, “If this were happening in Honduras, we’d know what to call it. It’s happening here instead, and so we are baffled.”
Fellow Atlantic writer McKay Coppins, who infamously wrote off Trump’s campaign, tweeted a quote from the story Monday which said, “We are living through the most dangerous challenge to the free govt of the U.S. that anyone alive has encountered.”
It wasn’t just liberal reporters from outlets as openly partisan outlets as Mother Jones or Slate who shared the article. New York Times’ national political correspondent Jonathan Martin retweeted the quote from the article suggesting Trump was like a dictator from Honduras.
A reporter from the Arizona Republic said Monday that the story is “a must read.” Jackson Diehl, a Washington Post columnist, said the story “offers a very plausible scenario of how Trump creates an US [sic] autocracy,” and Nina dos Santos, the Europe editor for CNN, called The Atlantic story “sobering and scary.”
Sharing The Atlantic story is, however, not the only way to show your hatred for Trump’s administration. Jessie Singal, a writer for New York magazine, tweeted, “Thousands are filling the streets to protest the potential rise of fascism.”
CNN national security correspondent Jim Sciutto tweeted out an image of the “early warning signs of fascism” in the Holocaust Museum and wrote “Heart-stopping.” Just before that, he retweeted Merriam-Webster saying their top search is “fascism” and said, “More than 200 years old and yet right on the news.”
Yahoo News global anchor Katie Couric tweeted out the poster about the signs of fascism, and said, “This [Holocaust Museum] poster listing the warning signs of fascism has gone viral. Thoughts?”
This @HolocaustMuseum poster listing the warning signs of fascism has gone viral. Thoughts? pic.twitter.com/XfmdOuxQLe
— Katie Couric (@katiecouric) January 31, 2017
Teen Vogue editorial director Phillip Picardi was rather explicit in his observation, and wrote Monday following Trump’s firing of former acting attorney general Sally Yates, “Yup. This is fascism.”