Harris’s comments went significantly further than her previous day’s attack on Trump’s increasingly authoritarian rhetoric, when she called him “unstable and unhinged” and “dangerous” in response to his branding of Democratic opponents as “the enemy within”. Trump had also advocated using the military against opponents he accused of plotting “chaos” on election day, although – as an opposition candidate – he has no power to do so.

A newly published book by the journalist Bob Woodward quotes the retired chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, as calling Trump a “total fascist” and “a fascist to the core”.