A legal scholar and a former Trump White House official made clear on Wednesday what a second Donald Trump presidency is likely to have in store for Americans, many of whom are still stunned by the former president’s bruising defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I think that this is the most significant and most destructive presidential election probably in our history,’ legal scholar Norman Ornstein told journalist Mehdi Hasan in a Zeteo interview. “Because, while we have elected bad presidents before – we’ve elected incompetent presidents before – we have not elected a president who has made clear during the campaign that he will be a dictator on day one and will destroy or shred the Constitution to whatever degree he feels it is necessary.”
Ornstein told the interview host that what he found even worse were the “enablers” surrounding the president-elect.
“From the Supreme Court through the other institutions – my fear is not just Donald Trump – it is that the guardrails we have built up over two and a half centuries are not going to hold,” he said.
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“Yes,” said Olivia Troye, a former national security adviser to Mike Pence, nodding her head in agreement with Ornstein’s assessment.
The Republicans for Harris member added that she found the “loyalists and enablers” that would likely surround and advise Trump, including ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and right-wing strategist Steve Bannon, who was recently released from federal prison, “frightening and appalling.”
“What I saw toward the end of the Trump administration was people of integrity and character that I had respected early on in it, I saw them start to change, and that I think is the concern is that there are no guardrails,” Troye said.
She noted that the possibility of retribution makes her concerned for herself, for people employed in the media, and Ornstein, who Hasan noted earlier in the interview was a “long-standing Trump critic.”
“This is very real,” Troye said. “And these people, you know, they don’t forget.”
Ornstein added: “Maybe the worst won’t happen, but it’s going to be damn close,” but then noted that Trump has the playbook of “what dictators do.” And while he described the Democrats as being “gobsmacked” by the sweeping overnight election results, he also cautioned against blaming Harris and the vice president’s campaign.
“I don’t think a different nominee would have done any better,” he said.
Watch the clip below or at this link.