Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” political commentator David Gergen said the “chaos” President Donald Trump was causing through his attacks on special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe and the media could be “the beginning of an authoritarian rule.”

Gergen said, “I think it’s a way to discredits other institutions that may become critical to him. Starting with Bob Mueller, discrediting Mueller, discrediting what may come out throughout Justice Department through Mueller and the press on what we’re reporting on what Mueller does, so a third of the country will believe it’s all overblown, or it has been made up or whatever it may be. There is a clear pattern right from the beginning that has actually in some ways worked because it has kept that base together, but it’s eroding the trust in the presidency — the trust in this president around the rest of the country. It has been extremely damaging I think for our sense of being a single people that we have some sense of unity about our country.”

He continued, “We have an election around the corner this year. What if the Democrats take the House back? Will that be blamed on fake what if they fall short? Are Democrats going to think, it was all that meddling, and they have won a few seats that they wouldn’t have otherwise one. This is what split the country apart, and it is a beginning and many other countries it’s the beginning of an authoritarian rule, and that’s the larger threat.”

He added, “I find it the threat is growing. There is a new book out about how democracies die, written by two Harvard professors and it’s quite striking about the number of countries that were led by democratically elected leaders, but they turned more and more authoritarian. A dozen countries have flipped from democracy to authoritarianism since the cold war. We’re not immune to that. I think we have strong checks and balances and thank God we have long traditions and norms, but we have to protect those, in a bipartisan way. We must come together. Those of us who care about the way the country has been run historically must rally to the kind of standards and the respect for the rule of law, and free press has made this country great.”

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