Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke out about the possibility of what a second term for former President Donald Trump could mean for the future of the United States, saying it would signal "the end of our country as we know it."
During an appearance on daytime talk show The View, Clinton compared Trump to the genocidal Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, saying that if he were to be elected again, all semblance of American democracy would vanish.
You can hear Clinton's remarks in the video below.
She said:
“I think it would be the end of our country as we know it. And I don’t say that lightly.”
“When I was secretary of state, I used to talk about ‘one and done.' What I meant by that is that people would get legitimately elected and then they would try to do away with elections, and do away with opposition, and do away with a free press.”
“Hitler was duly elected. All of a sudden somebody with those tendencies, dictatorial, authoritarian tendencies, would be like ‘OK we’re gonna shut this down, we’re gonna throw these people in jail.’"
"And they didn’t usually telegraph that. Trump is telling us what he intends to do.”
Clinton's remarks followed a recent Washington Post article that outlined Trump's plans to utilize the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate political adversaries and former associates who have criticized him, should he return to the White House.
Additionally, he has explored the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act on his first day in office, a move that would allow him to deploy the U.S. military domestically to suppress protests and dissent, a proposal that was discouraged by military leaders during his term.
Many concurred with Clinton's assessment.
Clinton, who ran against Trump in the 2016 presidential election, has previously voiced many concerns about Trump's approach to leadership and democracy during her campaign.
She often criticized him for what she described as dictatorial tendencies and a perceived threat to American democratic values and has since her 2016 election loss been largely vindicated as Trump's rhetoric and behavior lived up to her predictions.
Over the summer, she spoke out in response to the news Trump and 18 of his associates were indicted in Georgia for their attempts to overturn the 2020 election result, emphasizing that the indictments against Trump serve as evidence of the American judicial system functioning effectively.
Clinton called Trump's indictment "a terrible moment for our country to have a former president accused of these terribly important crimes" but nonetheless stressed that "the system is working" because "all of the efforts by Trump and his allies and enablers to try and silence the truth and undermine democracy have been brought into the light."
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