DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Kagan, "This is how fascism comes to America," you wrote almost 10 years ago: "not with jackboots and salutes, but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac." Did it take the ICE militia killing U.S. citizens in Minneapolis to convince your compatriots of how dangerous Trump really is?

Kagan: Unfortunately, to this day very few Americans have understood what is happening here. Some like what they're seeing, others are in denial about what's happening, still others think it won't be that bad. It's crazy. When you see such developments elsewhere, you think: Why didn't they stand up? Why didn't they flee? And now we are watching, at home, an entire country falling under dictatorship almost without resistance.

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DER SPIEGEL: You also predicted in 2023 what Trump’s ultimate aim was: Dictatorship is the goal, you said. But you didn’t say anything about something like ICE. Did you not think him capable of committing violence against his own citizens?

Kagan: I have to admit, I didn’t anticipate this kind of military brutality in the streets. I lacked the imagination for it. But it's still only the average people in the streets who are standing up. I don't know why hardly anyone seems to understand that Trump and the people behind him – his deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the Project 2025 head Russell Vought – that these people are actively trying to subvert liberal democracy. They are destroying the work of the founders.