Magazine Devotes Issue to Trump 'Danger' Warnings

Last month, former President Trump attacked the Atlantic as a "third rate magazine" after an essay criticized his "fascistic" language. Expect the enmity to increase because the Atlantic is devoting its January/February issue to Trump—in the form of a warning about how his second term would likely play out. The magazine has begun publishing 24 essays under the umbrella "If Trump Wins" that can be found here.

• Editor's note: In his note to readers, editor Jeffrey Goldberg sets the tone, writing that "Trump and Trumpism pose an existential threat to America and to the ideas that animate it." The country, he adds, sustained "serious damage" in the first Trump term. "A second term, if there is one, will be much worse." Goldberg says this is not about partisan politics, because the magazine believes a democracy needs both a strong liberal and conservative party. "Our concern is that the Republican Party has mortgaged itself to an antidemocratic demagogue, one who is completely devoid of decency."

• 'Danger': One of the first essays published is by David Frum, former speechwriter for George W. Bush, who cites the multiple legal cases against Trump and warns that, "for his own survival, he would have to destroy the rule of law." In the piece headlined "The Danger Ahead," Frum argues that "a second Trump term would instantly plunge the country into a constitutional crisis more terrible than anything seen since the Civil War." Right now, most people "underestimate the chaos that would lie ahead."
• Trump response: Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said the Atlantic project "is nothing more than another version of the media's failed and false Russia collusion hoax," in a statement to the Hill. "The Atlantic will be out of business soon because nobody will read that trash."
• NYT weighs in: The New York Times had a lengthy news story Monday that echoes the Atlantic theme. The story headlined "Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First" makes the case that Trump would go into a second term with the same "authoritarian impulses" but with fewer checks against him (not as many staffers reining him in, for example, and a more conservative Supreme Court). Thus, "Trump's and his advisers' more extreme policy plans and ideas for a second term would have a greater prospect of becoming reality."

(More Donald Trump stories.)