Maddow Blog | Trump makes disturbing new threats and targets election officials

Donald Trump traveled to North Carolina on Friday and received an endorsement from the Fraternal Order of Police despite his criminal record. During his speech at the FOP event, the former president called on the nation's largest police union to help him by “watching for voter fraud” nationwide.

As a New York Times report put it, it was “an appeal that, if enforced, could violate numerous state laws and lead to allegations of voter intimidation.”

A day later, the Republican candidate made matters worse. NBC News reported:

Even for Trump, the written message posted on his social media platform was a bombshell.

It began with “CEASE & DESIST,” a phrase the Republican has apparently heard before, although he doesn't seem to fully understand what it means. He then accused Democrats of being responsible for “rampant cheating and crookedness” in 2020 – a continuation of the ridiculously dishonest propaganda campaign known as the “Big Lie” – before putting his threat into action.

“Therefore, the 2024 election, where voting has just begun, will be closely monitored by professionals, and IF I WIN, the people who CHEATED will be punished to the fullest extent of the law, which will include lengthy prison sentences, so that this perversion of justice is not repeated,” Trump wrote.

And as if that were not enough, he concluded: “Please know that these legal consequences also extend to lawyers, political activists, donors, illegal voters and corrupt election officials. Those who behave unscrupulously will be tracked down, caught and prosecuted on a scale that has unfortunately never been seen before in our country.”

Were this a normal White House candidate heading the national ticket of a healthy political party, one might be tempted to assume that such a written message would be accompanied by credible evidence of systematic wrongdoing. Unsurprisingly, however, this was not the case: Trump simply threatened various people connected to the election with long prison sentences based on ridiculous conspiracy theories that only make sense in his twisted mind.

It was, as a Politico report summed up, one of the “clearest threats yet from Republicans to overthrow the rule of law.” A Washington Post report added that the former president's threats were also “the clearest signal yet that he may not accept the outcome in November if he loses.”

The same article quoted an unnamed Republican politician in a swing state who found the online tirade quite disturbing.

“He sounds like he's losing his mind,” the Republican official said. “Sad, someone should do something, like replace him as the nominee.”

This assessment seemed more than fair to me, although I was also amazed at Trump's openness when reading his tirade. The former president is de facto pursuing an authoritarian election program and is becoming more and more open about it.

Common sense would suggest that the Republican nominee would be more subtle about his intentions. But Trump instead throws caution to the wind, advocating a “strong” leadership style, boasting about his support of dictators, raising the prospect of a temporary American “dictatorship,” talking about “revoking” parts of the Constitution that stand in the way of his ambitions, arguing that his rivals should not be “allowed” to run against him, attacking immigrants with Hitler-style rhetoric while simultaneously promising pardons for politically aligned criminals and announcing a crackdown on the free press.

None of this is secret. He has revealed this vision publicly and with pride.

No one should claim that the Americans were not warned.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com.