Trump was literally impeached for attempting to trade US weapons for dirt on his political opponents after which his personal lawyers and DOJ appointees spent years “investigating” his opponents. Then there was the IRS targeting he used to go after those who worked with Mueller.. people who deny this stuff happened are either super low info commenters or actively malicious so it’s probably not worth engaging but it’s gaslighting on an impressive scale at least.
Aside from all that, if the best defense of a Presidential candidate explicitly promising to use the military and DOJ to target the media, political rivals and anyone who opposes him is that he “says silly things”, that’s not actually reassuring at all. “You can’t trust his repeated promises” shouldn’t be a benign fact..