“I’m not the dictator, you are,” seems to be the response of the Trump campaign after the former president told Fox News host Sean Hannity he wouldn’t act like an authoritarian, “except for day one.”

In a lengthy bit of clean-up messaging sent by former President Donald Trump’s campaign Wednesday morning, the ex-commander-in-chief’s representatives said that, despite his assertion he would be dictator — if only temporarily — it is not Trump who is threatening to lead a dictatorship, but President Joe Biden.

“There’s a dictator in the White House. While the White House and their puppets in the media project themselves onto President Trump, the truth is that the real dictator is already in the White House. Joe Biden abuses his power to target journalists, politicians, activists, and concerned parents,” the campaign wrote.

The campaign’s response to Trump’s comments — comically reminiscent of his insistence that it was Hillary Clinton, not he, serving as a puppet of foreign governments — come after the 45th president spent some time with Hannity Tuesday night and after multiple major U.S. publications warned that the American media is not doing enough to make plain the former president’s stated plans, should he return to power, signal the rise of an autocratic regime.

“Do you, in any way, have any plans whatsoever if re-elected president to abuse power, to break the law to use the government to go after people?” Hannity asked.

“You mean like they’re using right now?” Trump responded.

“You are promising America tonight you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” Hannity asked again later.

“Except for day one,” Trump eventually answered, saying his stint as an autocrat would last just long enough to “close the border and I want to drill, drill, drill.”

“After that, I’m not a dictator,” Trump said.

Were it held today, or on any day during this election cycle preceding it, Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination in an historic landslide. Teflon Don, as he’s been called, hasn’t participated in a single party debate, but still leads the next leading Republican by nearly 50 points.

It’s a position he’s maintained through four criminal indictments detailing 91 alleged felony crimes across multiple state and federal jurisdictions — many of which apparently demonstrate his willingness to subvert the law in favor of retaining power — and while he publicly defends his business empire from findings of fraud and his personal reputation from judicial determinations that, according to common parlance, he is a rapist.

On Sunday, former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney said that Trump has made clear what his intentions are if he is returned to power in 2024. Cheney is apparently considering a run at the White House as a third-party candidate.

“He’s told us what he will do,” she said. “One of the things that we see happening today is a sort of a sleepwalking dictatorship in the United States.”

Similar warnings appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times and the Atlantic.

“A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending,” a Post editor wrote on at the end of November.

Herald wire service contributed.