A recent episode of “Live From the LBJ Library With Mark Updegrove,” an interview program distributed by American Public Television, featured the radical historian Updegrove interviewing radical Georgia politician/voting activist Stacey Abrams. The rhetoric was fiercely ideological from the start, with President Trump and Republicans accused by both host and guest of leading the country into authoritarianism by depriving minorities of the vote.
Mark Updegrove: ….Stacey Abrams spent 11 years in the Georgia House of Representatives, where she rose to become the first African American to serve as minority leader. In 2018, she ran a historic campaign for the Georgia governorship and has remained a prominent voice in national politics, especially on the issue of voting rights. Tonight, we discuss the decades-long effort to gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the danger signs of authoritarianism, and the work we can all do to protect our institutions and bolster our fragile democracy….
How's this for a sentimental, slanted set-up to a supposed journalistic question?
Updegrove: So I talked about John Lewis a moment ago, who valiantly stood at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge to fight for voting rights. Bloody Sunday resulted, Alabama State Troopers bloodily thwarting this march from Selma to Montgomery. And it resulted in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which Lyndon Johnson signed into law. But since then, we've seen a steady erosion in voting rights. How did that happen?
Stacey Abrams went after the Supreme Court, including Chief Justice John Roberts.
Stacey Abrams: [Former Supreme Court Justice] William Rehnquist, who later became a chief justice of the United States Supreme Court...was one of the architects of putting in place what essentially were barriers to Spanish speakers being able to register to vote and stay on the roles in Arizona. And so it's important to also understand that his protege was Chief Justice John Roberts. And that as a lawyer, John Roberts was very involved in attacking and eroding the perquisites of the Voting Rights Act….
Things really got cooking when Updegrove teed Abrams up to enumerate “10 steps toward autocracy that fit a pattern that we're seeing in our country today,” a list that conveniently hits everything Trump has done that the left hates, a “remix” of a list by the equally radical Princeton professor Kim Scheppele (another PBS favorite).
Liberal historian/PBS host Mark Updegrove teed up radical pol Stacey Abrams up to enumerate what he called “10 steps toward autocracy that fit a pattern that we're seeing in our country today.” Abrams went through all 10: "...you attack the truth. That means attacking the media." pic.twitter.com/SSAbo4FltA
— Clay Waters 🇮🇱 (@claywaters44) July 23, 2026
Abrams: ….step one, you have a free and fair election, but it's the last one. Step two, you see an expansion of executive power….And that's why you see the gutting of civil service, the firing of people, but also the closure of national parks, the attacks on food security benefits and healthcare benefits because you want people to believe democracy isn't worth the effort.
It’s telling that the left is in the forefront of defending the elitist media. It knows who its friends are.
Step six, you attack the truth. That means attacking the media. It means banning books and denying information. It means the rise of propaganda. It means attacking comedians, attacking anyone who would tell the truth of what's happening because propaganda can't work if it has to combat actual reality. Step seven, you scapegoat communities, minority communities, disadvantaged communities, dispossessed communities….
Updegrove, operating ostensibly on behalf of the public, never took the slightest issue with any of Abrams’ statements, but drove her on to new lows of ideological hysteria
Updegrove: So as you look at this formula as it applies to other countries who have fallen to autocracy, is there a point of no return? As you look at those 10 steps, where is the point of no return?
Abram's most nauseating speech turned DEI inside out:
Abrams: ....The attack on the language of DEI, they don't care about the letters because think about it in the reverse. Which part do you oppose? Do you oppose diversity, which means you want only uniformity? Are you angry about equity, which means you want unfairness? Or are you reviled by inclusion, which means you think that you should be able to exclude and disrespect? That's the conversation we should be having….
Updegrove also serves as presidential historian for ABC News and makes frequent appearances on ABC News Live.
