Barely an hour before the opening of the second debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and presidential biographer David Maraniss put Trump’s pre-debate shenanigans in perspective. After the Republican nominee for president held a “debate-preparation” press availability with women who his opponents’s husband accused former President Bill Clinton of unwanted sexual advances, Mariniss described the stunt as “the slimiest most depressing scene in modern American electoral history.”

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The debate itself produced a slimier and more depressing scene: that of a candidate for the presidency of the United States proposing to use the position to investigate and jail his opponent.

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There are countries where winners of political fights have moved to jail their rivals.

But those countries are not constitutional democracies. Indeed, as Maraniss explained after Trump’s ominous announcement: “This is THE definition of fascism — Trump saying Hillary would be in jail if he were president.”

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