Trump is no threat to U.S. democracy, according to historian Niall Ferguson

• Claims that Donald Trump is a threat to U.S. democracy and would "be a tyrant" have been weakened by the legacy of his first term, historian Niall Ferguson told CNBC on Friday.
• "The system contained Trump's impulses in 2020, 2021, successfully, and I think it would contain them again," Ferguson said.

Claims that former U.S. President Donald Trump is a threat to the country's democracy have been weakened by the legacy of his first term, historian Niall Ferguson said Friday.

"I think this whole argument that Donald Trump was going to end democracy and establish some kind of American fascism was blown up because of the way his first term went. Remember, all these things were said in 2016, that Trump would be a tyrant," Ferguson told CNBC's Steve Sedgwick at the Ambrosetti Forum, an annual economic conference held in Italy.

"The great weakness, in my view, of Trump's case has always been his conduct on January 6, 2021 and his attempt to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election, this I thought was the end of his political career. I was dead wrong, he's back," Ferguson continued.

Jan. 6, 2021 saw dramatic scenes of rioting, vandalism and looting at the U.S. Capitol, which began as protests against Trump's loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

A select committee report released in 2022 found Trump made repeated attempts to "delegitimize the election process," made false claims about the legitimacy of the result, and performed a "dereliction" of duty by refusing to call off the mob.

"I think the key point that one has to make here is that the system contained Trump's impulses in 2020, 2021, successfully, and I think it would contain them again if he were to be only the first person since Grover