I thought, surely, we're not that far gone.

And then, yeah, and then I realized maybe we are, actually.

There's a common perception that democracy ends with a battle.

Soldiers in the streets, a coup d'etat, the fall of a government.

Modern-day authoritarianes do not come into power by brute force.

No, democracy's lost one little step at a time.

Modern-day authoritarians come to power by winning democratic elections. But then once they get into power,

tilting all the lovers of power in their favor.

We know this because we have studied how autocracies take hold.

My nightmare is that fascism comes to America, but it's marching under the banner of freedom.

We've reported from places where freedoms are curtailed and corruption flourishes.

If you are accused of something, you're going to be proven guilty. There are no exceptions.

We've seen with our own eyes what happens when democracy gives way to authoritarianism.

When we look at America today right now, we see a place where the slide to autocracy has already begun.

It's not some distant future. It's the present. The evidence can be found in the tightening grip of conspiracy theories.

Never in a million years would I have thought that somebody would have accused me of

shredding ballots from the 2020 election, feeding them to chickens, and then burning the chickens

to cover the evidence. It can be seen in the misuse of investigations and the fragility of the courts.

I just kept saying, like, when do we get to the part where the facts come out?

There are signs of autocracy in the growth of dark money and the lack of transparency in politics.

This is a beast that is stalking America's political landscape.

To understand it, you've got to look around the world.

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