This isn't just partisan Democrat talking points. International legal scholars are concerned about the authoritarian threat:
Trump allies and a broad sweep of conservative political groups in the US have adopted what they are calling ‘Project 2025’ – a detailed agenda to fire tens of thousands of civil servants in the US bureaucracy and replace them with appointees loyal to Trump. It’s a deceptively radical plan that would
push presidential power beyond its present legal limits to effectively sabotage government agencies and programmes from the inside, making it impossible for them to pursue their lawful missions.
‘We should take him at his own word, which is that a second term will be as he puts it, a moment of retribution, where he will again in his own words, rather gleefully lay claim to the powers of a dictator’, says William Howell, the Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. ‘At a re-election, he will claim – and not unjustifiably – a popular mandate to push back against democracy, and small “d” democratic checks that are meant to limit the exercise of presidential powers. He’s been completely forthright about what he intends to do. This is not a case of a would-be autocrat hiding his ambition.’
https://www.ibanet.org/The-authoritaria ... to-America
That is the concern.