No President or President-elect in history has ever before publicly condemned individual citizens for criticizing him. That occurs in two-bit dictatorships intent on stamping out dissent.
No President or President-elect has ever before bypassed the media and spoken directly to large numbers of his followers in order to disparage individual citizens who criticize him. That occurred in the fascist rallies of the 1930s.
America came closest to this in the 1950s when Senator Joseph McCarthy wrecked the lives of thousands of American citizens whom he arbitrarily and carelessly claimed were communists.
McCarthy’s reign of terror ended when a single man asked him publicly, during the televised hearings McCarthy was conducting, “have you no decency, sir?” In that moment, Americans began to see McCarthy for the tyrant he was.
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