Nightmare scenario: Matt Gaetz as Attorney General in a second Trump administration

How on Earth is anyone from the rational middle or the conscientious left supposed to “engage the other side” in meaningful dialogue when the Republican Party is led by Donald Trump and sycophants like Matt Gaetz?
And not just Gaetz, the Florida congressman, but many like him.
Many in the GOP — let’s make that most — continue to suck up to the worst president in history. Trump was twice impeached. He has been indicted three times and is looking at a fourth set of charges. And yet, Republicans continue to ride the Trump train and abide his efforts to bring authoritarian government to the U.S.
Gaetz, who says he has “dreams” of being the Attorney General in a second Trump administration, suggested in Iowa on Saturday that he would turn the Department of Justice into an American Gestapo.
“We know that only through force do we make any change in a corrupt town like Washington, D.C.,” Gaetz said.
That sounds like the stuff we hear from armed white supremacists. It sounds like the battle cry of those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. It sounds like the stuff of dictatorships, and here’s a congressman saying it out loud: If Republicans don’t take back full power in Washington, then force — that is, violence — will be the “only” solution.
“And so to all my friends here in Iowa,” Gaetz said, “when you see them come for this man [Trump], know that they are coming for our movement and they are coming for all of us.”
That’s a brand of whacko demagoguery unbecoming of a member of Congress. But there he sits.
I usually don’t waste brain cells on Gaetz and the other nut jobs in the GOP. But we can’t let this kind of talk go unanswered.
“Mr. President, I cannot stand these people that are destroying our country,” Gaetz said, echoing Trump’s constant harangues about how the country is going to hell because of “these people,” presumably Democrats. (By the way, under Biden the country has added some 13 millions jobs, the unemployment rate has been below 4% for 17 straight months, growth is at 2.4% and inflation is down to a manageable 3%. Wages are going up faster than the price of goods for the first time since the pandemic. Gasoline prices still suck but that’s for a lot of reasons out of the control of the president, no matter who’s in the White House.)
“They are opening our borders,” he said.
Not true.
“They are weaponizing our federal law enforcement against patriotic Americans who love this nation.”
Here’s where Gaetz ramps up his audition for Attorney General.
He makes clear to Trump, with whom he campaigned in Iowa, that Attorney General Gaetz would never have prosecuted the hundreds of Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol and the police who defended it. And, of course, Trump would not be prosecuted. In fact, it’s clear from other recent statements that Gaetz would prosecute Hunter Biden, Joe Biden and probably Jill Biden, with no evidence of criminality necessary. The Gestapo never bothered with such formalities, neither would a Justice Department in a second Trump administration.
We can’t dismiss all this bluster as just that, a bunch of bluster. Democrats and independents need to take the threat seriously: A second Trump administration, with Gaetz and other demagogues running the government, will be the end of the country as a democratic republic. It will become something unrecognizable.
We don’t need “force” to change the country.
We need votes to make a better one.