Trump is accusing the FBI and Democrats of treason and it’s absolutely terrifying

As the 2020 election gets closer, Donald Trump’s campaigning is heading in a scarily authoritarian direction.

The president has been known to throw baseless accusations at his enemies and in recent weeks, he’s ramped up his unproven claim that the FBI spied on him and committed “treason”.

Last night, at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, Trump watched approvingly as his supporters chanted “lock them up!” to the FBI and Democrats.

He added:

Well, we have a great new attorney general who’s going to give it a very fair look… very fair.

Firstly, William Barr – the AG he’s referring to – is not the president’s attorney general, he’s the attorney general for all Americans.

And the image of Trump at a campaign rally suggesting that he’s going to use the attorney general to take down his enemies is incredibly disturbing.

This is not what normal democratic leaders do - this is the sort of behaviour you'd expect from a dictator...

For anyone who needs a quick reminder – the FBI was tasked with investigating potential misconduct by the Trump campaign in 2016.

That's very different from "spying" because it means surveillance warrants had to be authorised by judges and rules had to be followed to make sure the investigation was legal.

Trump has also repeatedly claimed that the FBI had it in for him and wanted to help the Democrats.

But that accusation is contradicted by the fact that the organisation did not publicly reveal their investigation into his campaign during the 2016 election.

Meanwhile, they were happy to reveal their investigation into Hillary Clinton, which was a revelation that some people believe contributed to her defeat.

Current and former FBI officials have denied Trump was spied on.

And for the record, Trump has made more than 10,000 false or misleading statements since taking office so he's not even close to being a reliable source...

As senator Chris Murphy noted on Twitter, we should all be unnerved by the president's recent outbursts.

If we saw this sort of language being used in Russia or Iran or any of the countries the US claims are undemocratic, we would rightly call it out.

Here’s a warning about Trump's language from someone who literally studies authoritarian regimes…

You have to wonder what Trump would need to say for Democrats to think it was worth impeaching him.

More: Trump accuses Fox of 'moving to the losing side' after giving coverage to Pete Buttigieg​