“Here’s a quiz: Which world leader made the following statements? ‘We are witnessing the greatest election fraud in the history of the country, in my opinion in the history of any democracy.’ … ‘This may be the most important speech I’ve ever made. I want to provide an update on our ongoing efforts to expose … tremendous voter fraud and irregularities.’ … ‘The election will be flipped, dear friends.’ If you guessed Donald Trump, you are only one-third right.” Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic: Politicians around the world are borrowing Trump’s “Stop the Steal” tactics. These false fraud allegations are profoundly dangerous. Democracy Is Surprisingly Easy to Undermine.

+ “Imagine if after [the Watergate] scandal, the Republican Party, instead of condemning Nixon, had embraced him slavishly, insisted that he did absolutely nothing wrong, settled into denial and obstructionism and proposed new laws to endorse Nixon’s most egregious conduct? Imagine if the only people purged by the party had been those who criticized Nixon?” Fareed Zakaria in WaPo: The decay of American democracy is real.