President Trump’s ongoing comments to both journalists and on social media sites like Truth Social are stark examples of crumbling democratic forbearance and dangerous expansion of executive power. Beyond the routine vulgarity that has come to characterize his public communications, Trump has made explicit claims that the United States intends to carry out actions that, under international law, would constitute war crimes. In a post on his Truth Social, he wrote that, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” language that can be perceived as a gesture towards terroristic intent. But what does this mean for democracy? Are we supposed to take his words at face value, or operate under the assumption that maybe he is just trying to provoke people? The unsettling reality is that a functioning democracy should never have to grapple with either of those questions about its own head of state. 

Trump’s statements have sparked widespread condemnation from both the left and right. Even some of his most loyal former allies have called for the invocation of the 25th amendment, which provides a constitutional mechanism for the forced removal of the president. Former United States representative Majorie Taylor Greene—who was just recently replaced by Trump backed Republican Clay Fuller— was among those commenting: “We cannot kill an entire civilization. This is evil and madness”. That Greene, a figure who’s built her political identity around fierce loyalty to Trump, has felt compelled in recent months to publicly denounce his words underscore just how far democratic norms have shifted in recent times. When a politician’s most fervent supporters become their critics, it signals institutional decay deeper than partisan disagreement. 

This represents the breakdown of democratic norms through executive aggrandizement, a process in which executives expand or exaggerate their powers. Its opposite, forbearance (restraint in using power), according to many political scientists, including Lieberman and Mettler, is described as one of the most essential guardrails for democracy. When leaders abandon forbearance they not only bend the rules, they signal to both citizens and other political regimes that rules no longer govern their behavior. Trump’s consistent pattern of overstating his authority, dismissing legal constraints, and normalizing extreme rhetoric is precisely this kind of erosion in action. Each instance, taken alone, can potentially be explained away as part of his marketing tactics. However, together, they constitute a sustained assault on the conventions that make successful democratic governance possible.

The legal dimensions of Trump’s statements are no less alarming. Under international law, destroying civilian infrastructure has very narrow exceptions, and Trump’s plan would almost certainly impact civilians catastrophically. Arguments on both sides debate the legality of these threats: one side arguing that this is a textbook war crime, others suggesting that this mere threat is being used as leverage. As leverage, rhetoric can be used to create a sense of affective polarization, which Iyengar et al. describes as a situation in which individuals are driven to social and emotional hostility towards other political parties. By reinforcing emotional differences and framing the United States success as part of a zero-sum game, one side must lose in order for the other to win. 

Statements that would have nearly ended a political career a generation ago now move quickly out of public view and into the background noise of the news cycle. The outrage fades, the headlines move on, and the precedent quietly solidifies. Each episode of unchecked rhetoric raises the question for what we should expect to come next. This is how Nancy Bermeo describes how democratic erosion works—not through a single dramatic rupture, but through the steady step-by-step mechanisms which may, in isolation, seem survivable, but when added together, they fundamentally transform how we expect institutions to work with those in power.