Baier protested, but Harris continued, essentially accusing him of covering up what he knows to be true about Trump. “You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military against the American people,” Harris said. She added:

He has spoken about pursuing people involved in peaceful protest. He’s talked about locking people up because they disagree with him. This is one democracy. And in a democracy, the president of the United States, in the United States of America, should be willing to take criticism without saying he would lock people up for it. And this is what is at stake.

What Harris revealed here is that, at the most fundamental level, Trump is campaigning on an explicit promise to treat the opposition and its voters as sub-American. He has threatened to prosecute the “vermin” opposition, vowed to use federal bailout money to extort blue states into doing his bidding, sent the military into Democrat-run cities, and has now made it all even more explicit in his latest article. “enemy within” rants.

Trump is essentially following an open pledge to serially violate his oath of office and wage a kind of scorched earth campaign against blue America. Baier knows this is all toxic to swing voters. And so the image of Trump he presented was one in which the only victim of persecution is Trump himself.