The off-year election results on Tuesday showed that Donald Trump’s political power, in his second presidency, is not completely without limits. Normal politics still apply, at least to some degree.
Now, one expert says Trump is looking at another potential downfall.
Appearing this week on MSNBC’s The Weeknight, Norm Eisen, who served as White House ethics lawyer during the Obama Administration and is also a former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic, looked at the example of “democratic backsliding” in other countries to look at what could ultimately bring down the president.
“The besetting sin, the greatest danger of self-destruction that dictators have, is overreach,” Eisen said.
As a diplomat I have studied how authoritarians fail all over the world
When dictators overreach, autocracy fails
Trump is overreaching big time & the people won’t let him get away with it
I explained on @weeknightmsnbc 👇 pic.twitter.com/K2I7WvsQB8
— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) November 4, 2025
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“In a sense, the phrase is, ‘The worse, the better,’” he added, according to a HuffPost transcript of the TV appearance. “So, the American people will not let him get away with that. The courts alone won’t save us, but the people are the ultimate guardrail and the ultimate safeguard.”
While the segment aired before the election results on Tuesday, Eisen anticipated that voters were getting sick of Trump’s act.
“They don’t like it,” Eisen said. “So, I’m hopeful that we will be strong enough to stand up to his shenanigans.”
Eisen did predict, however, that “it will get worse.” The president, he said, wants to get to “a place where, when not just the Insurrection Act but I think even martial law is invoked, nobody bats an eye.”
Back in March, the Trump Administration announced that Eisen was among the individuals from which they had revoked security clearances. Although Eisen joked at the time that it was not the first time Trump had threatened to pull his clearance.
It’s like the third time he’s announced he’s revoking my security clearance
I mean, does he revoke it & then give it back to me so he can revoke it again?
Who does he think I am, a big law firm or a billionaire who’s gonna back down? It just makes me file even more lawsuits! https://t.co/zATeSFIuZS
— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) March 22, 2025
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
