Conservative attorney and commentator George Conway on MSNBC on August 13, 2025

Conservative attorney and political commentator George Conway said Wednesday during an MSNBC interview that President Donald Trump is steering the United States toward authoritarianism, and that only unity across ideological and professional lines can counter it.

“We don’t have Ronald Reagan anymore. We have Tony Soprano,” Conway declared, comparing the current political environment to a mob-like environment rather than traditional conservatism.

“He’s holding people up, threatening them, bullying them, doing things that are beyond his legal power to do — and that’s what scares people," Conway said of Trump.

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He continued: "I think a better word for it, as I think about it, one that more people can understand, is gangsterism, thuggism."

According to Conway, such intimidation incentivizes institutions and individuals alike to “pay protection money,” citing examples such as Harvard University, which he says may have “knuckled under to pay $500 million,” and pressure on chip makers to yield to political coercion.

He also pointed to the targeted threats faced by critics like Miles Taylor, an ex-Department of Homeland Security official who served in Trump's first administration, remarking that “there is no limit to how low he [Trump] will go and what he will do to intimidate and to threaten.”

Taylor, who famously revealed himself as the “Anonymous” author critical of Trump, recently challenged the president’s April 9 directive that stripped his security clearance and launched an investigation into his conduct, calling it a retaliatory abuse of executive power.

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The former Trump official also appeared on the show and said, "I’m continuing to speak out about this is, I think, people need to know what it actually looks like. And, I won’t lie, it’s been a rough ride. It’s been a turbulent ride. And I say that as someone who generally is an optimist."

Taylor continued: "And I don’t really like people to have sympathy for me. But this has not been made easy. Because once you are on the president’s blacklist, all sorts of things in your life start to implode — businesses, relationships, friendships, financial. You have an army of lawyers."

He added that this isn’t just happening to him anymore.

"The president’s revenge campaign, as many of us predicted — as George predicted, predicted for many years — has gone nationwide, and it's affecting almost every single institution of our society," Taylor said.

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Conway said the path to breaking this cycle is collective action.

“The only way this stops is if people all get together — people of different stripes, people who are in industry, people who are in politics, people who are, you know, in universities — get together and say, ‘Enough. None of us are going to give in to this.’ And that’s how this ends.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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