Leftist media outlets — the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Atlantic — are stoking fear about a second Trump administration as former President Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden in key polling. 

On Friday, Washington Post Editor-at-Large Robert Kagan wrote an op-ed titled “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.” That was followed by a Monday excerpt labeled “The Fear of a Looming Trump Dictatorship” by columnist Ishaan Tharoor in the Post’s Today’s WorldView Newsletter.

“In just a few years, we have gone from being relatively secure in our democracy to being a few short steps, and a matter of months, away from the possibility of dictatorship,” wrote Kagan. 

He expressed worry that if Trump were to win back the White House, he could potentially seek a third term and disregard the Twenty-Second Amendment:

What about the desire for reelection, a factor that constrains most presidents? Trump might not want or need a third term, but were he to decide he wanted one, as he has sometimes indicated, would the 22nd Amendment block him any more effectively from being president for life than the Supreme Court, if he refused to be blocked? Why should anyone think that amendment would be more sacrosanct than any other part of the Constitution for a man like Trump, or perhaps more importantly, for his devoted supporters?

On Monday, the New York Times’ Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan, and Maggie Haberman authored a piece making the case that “a Second Trump Presidency May be More Radical Than His First.” 

They contend that checks on Trump would be “weaker,” and he would have a stronger opportunity to implement “more extreme policy plans.”

The trio wrote: 

What would be different in a second Trump administration is not so much his character as his surroundings. Forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term — staff members who saw their job as sometimes restraining him, a few congressional Republicans episodically willing to criticize or oppose him, a partisan balance on the Supreme Court that occasionally ruled against him — would all be weaker.

As a result, Mr. Trump’s and his advisers’ more extreme policy plans and ideas for a second term would have a greater prospect of becoming reality.

The Atlantic announced Monday morning that it is launching a special issue that “warns of the grave and extreme consequences if former President Trump were to win in 2024” and argues that “Trump and Trumpism pose an existential threat to America and to the ideas that animate it.”

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