Jan. 6 pardons are Trump's first stop on the road to authoritarianism | Trudy Rubin

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

79% : Trump has had amazing success in selling airbrushed history to his followers.
62% : It is stunning how many steps Trump has taken in one week that closely follow the autocrats' playbook, whether from instinct or because he has watched Russia's Vladimir Putin and Hungary's Viktor Orbán operate with few or no limits.
52% : Trump has already gotten billionaire media owners to bow.
47% : Yet, millions of MAGA followers -- despite all the facts available -- prefer to believe Trump.
45% : How many of you recall the TV image on Jan. 6, 2021, of Officer Daniel Hodges, squashed in a revolving door at the U.S. Capitol, screaming for help as MAGA thugs beat on his head? "Some called me a traitor, and someone reached under my helmet and tried to gouge out my eye," Hodges recalled last week on CNN, "and all were pardoned by Donald Trump."
45% : Trump spent the better part of his speeches and interviews last week obsessing over the wrongs done him in the past, including the investigation into his efforts to overturn a free election.
44% : This casts my mind back to decades of reporting from the Soviet Union, Russia, communist Eastern Europe, the Mideast, and Asia, where I watched how authoritarian rulers destroyed any vestige of the rule of law and crushed their "enemies within" -- sometimes gradually, sometimes quickly.
42% : Trump can't imitate that.
41% : Newly freed MAGA cop bashers once again roamed the Capitol and bragged of their readiness to use guns if Trump called on them.
35% : Now Trump has demanded government workers squeal on any "secret" effort to implement principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
32% : But according to President Trump, in a Wednesday interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, what happened "were very minor incidents."
28% : Trump is not disguising his authoritarian bent, but too many followers prefer to ignore it in hopes of tax cuts (for the rich) or a drop in the price of gas or eggs.
8% : Trump openly trashed former President Joe Biden as he stood beside him in inaugural ceremonies, and did so again in his address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

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