Trump's intensifying rhetoric offers insight into how he might govern again as president

Over the past two weeks, Donald Trump said shoplifters should be immediately shot, suggested the United States' top general be executed and mocked a political opponent’s husband who was beaten with a hammer. 

The former president and current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination also in recent weeks encouraged the impeachment of Democratic President Joe Biden because the “lowlifes Impeached me TWICE,” urged his party to shut down the U.S. government with the hope it would stall some of the criminal cases he faces, and said that, if elected to the White House again, he would threaten NBC News and MSNBC’s access to the airwaves over news coverage of him that he called “Country Threatening Treason.” 

“Violence is his political project now,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University. “It is the thing, besides his own victimhood, that he brings up the most.” 

Author of a book called “Strongmen,” Ben-Ghiat contends that Trump fits well in the category. His recent statements on shooting shoplifters, for example, call to mind strongman leaders he has previously praised such as former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, whose war on drugs featured “extrajudicial killings” of thousands of suspects without a trial, or other countries where military leaders disappear after falling out of favor with the regime.