Ashley Parker

But yeah, broadly, they support this.

Then he begins a series of strikes on boats in the Caribbean and East Pacific Oceans off the coast of Venezuela.

And yes, a lot of these boats that are targeted, there are drugs on them.

But it is not, as the president has claimed, you know, a huge mob or cartel

boss headed to the United States.

In some cases, these are small fishing boats, people who are petty criminals bringing small amounts of cocaine, not to the United States, but to neighboring islands like Trinidad.

But again, I was talking to someone in the White House and they said, look, if you ask the average American, should we blow up a boat with drugs on it headed to the United States?

They say yes.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

A slide towards authoritarianism, when you talk to experts about this, including some of my colleagues, is people sort of imagine it like the movie version where there's men in jackboots marching in the streets and tanks rolling.

And that's not really how it often starts.

It's sort of a slow slide of getting people comfortable with things that they never thought they would be comfortable with.

I don't think he has a particular pointed desire to tear down democratic norms.

Essentially, he wants to do what he wants to do, unconstrained by laws and norms in the Constitution.

And when he took office the first time, Congress could prevent that from happening.

Sometimes a single senator, sometimes a single senator from his own party could

could foil something he cared deeply about.

And that things like the Geneva Conventions and NATO alliances could get in the way with what he wanted to do.

And in many ways, these guardrails worked.

And in his second term, he is just unconstrained in doing what he wants to do.