NBC News presidential historian and author Michael Beschloss warned voters to “all be really vigilant and really sleep with one eye open” when it comes to former President Donald Trump and the 2024 election result if he loses.
The Republican nominee is “even more than he did in 2016 or 2020 saying that the election is going to be rigged and I’m not going to take this lying down,” Beschloss noted on Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Way Too Early.”
“He’s made much more preparation for this than he did in either of those earlier elections,” Beschloss told host Jonathan Lemire, a reference to Trump’s reported groundwork to legally challenge a potential 2024 loss and his ultimately unsuccessful efforts to overturn his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden.
Beschloss drew a stark contrast between Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris ― who remain neck and neck in the polls ― and cautioned, in a video shared online by Raw Story, that “the stakes of this election could not be higher.”
In March, when the election still looked as if it would be between Biden and Trump, Beschloss claimed the latter had actually “done us all a favor” with his increasingly authoritarian comments because it served as a chilling warning as to how “fascism and dictatorship might come to America.”
The historian has previously warned that America could in 2025 “be a dictatorship” if Trump wins and “carries through on his threat to suspend the Constitution.” Trump has vowed to be a dictator for just the first day of a potential second presidency.