The warning is that you do not have to abolish democratic institutions to make them stop constraining a President.

That is the useful part of the Russia comparison in the video.

The thesis is about institutional independence: prosecutors, regulators, courts and Congress are supposed to be able to reach conclusions the President dislikes and still act on them.

Some American institutions plainly still can. Lower courts continue to rule against Trump. Judges still tell the administration no.

But that is only half the test.

SCOTUS is also strengthening presidential control over parts of government Congress tried to make independent, while limiting some of the tools lower courts can use to restrain executive action.

That creates a more troubling possibility:

An institution can remain independent enough to say “no” while becoming too weak to make “no” matter.

That is where the Russia analogy becomes useful.

Authoritarian systems do not necessarily begin by closing the courts or abolishing the legislature.

The buildings can remain.
The titles can remain.
The procedures can remain.

What changes is whether those institutions retain enough independent power to constrain the person at the top.

So the question is not whether America is Russia.

It is whether we are moving toward a system where American institutions can still say no, but increasingly cannot make that no stick.