Former Intelligence Officials Warn Trump Poses Existential Threat to U.S. Democracy

Interview with Steven A. Cash, executive director of The Steady State, whose members are former senior national security officials drawn from across the intelligence, diplomatic, homeland security and defense communities.Steven Cash, who formerly served as senior advisor to the undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence & Analysis, talks about his group’s “Assessment of U.S. Democracy,” which warns the Trump administration’s consolidation of executive power, weakening of institutional checks and balances, politicization of justice and intelligence, and deliberate erosion of civil service neutrality—labeled competitive authoritarianism—constitutes an existential threat to U.S. democracy.