Even for a politician who doesn’t mince his words, his assessment of a Trump victory in November is sobering. “It will be the end of democracy, functional democracy.”

It may not happen on day one, he says. Trump wouldn’t be as obvious as to abolish elections. But he would steadily weaken democracy, making it harder for young people and people of colour to vote, enervating political opposition, whipping up anger against minorities and immigrants.

This interview with Sanders is from January of this year, well before the recent CPAC and Trump’s open calls to end democracy. And it’s the only point upon which I disagree with him.

I think elections WILL be abolished, and Trump will have no reason to slow down or hide his real objectives, even on Day 1.

Just to remind people, Day 1 of Trump’s first term he used to begin opening up and even selling long-protected BLM lands to corporate mining and energy companies.

Trump has a horrific agenda. Dismantling anything that could be an obstacle for him later is at the top of the list, like democracy itself, and he’ll get to it as soon as his feet land in the Oval Office.

And it’s not just about Trump being weak, craven, and humiliated: Trump is, essentially, a demagogue and a puppet, one that is owned by foreign interests. His owners will ensure that all Trump’s days are spent dismantling democracy, ensuring places like Cop City get up and running on schedule, and returning us all to the company store economy as soon as it can be done.

Watch the VP pick closely. It won’t be Trump’s choice, it will be someone relatively unknown that his owners pick, in the same way that Mike Johnson came out of bumfuck nowhere to be Speaker of the House. Watch that second place very carefully, because that’s who will eventually be POTUS once the hamberders, tertiary syphilis, and/or dissatisfied foreign Trump debt owners finish with Trump.