10/01/2025
When asked " how you think of just how significant the dangers are?" Burns replied, "the increase inexecutive power is perhaps the greatest existential threat to the United States right now."
Burns, who has made over 40 award-winning documentaries about all facets of the American experience, says that this concept of authoritarianism is not new to us, but it is an increasing threat.
"The patriots, the rebels, were mainly selecting against a despot, against an authoritarian. They knew human nature. They knew someone would eventually come along like that, and they were trying to figure out how to guard against it," he said.
"Jefferson, writing from Paris to Madison, said: What if someone should lose anelection but pretend false votes and reap the whirlwind? They werenāt idiots. They were really smart, and they were trying to guard against exactly that," Burns said.
Filmmaker Ken Burns, whose latest documentary focuses on the American Revolutionary War, tells the New York Times that the greatest existential threat to the United States right now is sitting right in the White House. "Jefferson says a few phrases after pursuit of happiness," Burns says, in referen...
