A 2023 institutional argument against a second-term US dictatorship

How reasonable were fears in 2023 that a second Trump presidency could turn the United States into a dictatorship?

Dictatorship was considered unlikely because the codified Constitution divides authority among institutions that are strongly protective of their own powers.

The argument does not expect a second Trump presidency to turn the United States into a dictatorship. It rests on the codified Constitution and on institutions jealous of their own authority, including the courts and Senate. A president's broad foreign-policy discretion is contrasted with the need to persuade other actors in domestic government. Officeholders who know how to use their own powers are considered unlikely to surrender them voluntarily. The structural judgment is explicitly separated from any claim that another Trump term would be good. The closing comparison notes that the British system does not reproduce the same formal separation of executive and legislative power.