During an appearance on The View this week, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton went directly after former President Donald Trump and his allies in the Republican Party for their betrayal of democracy. In short, Clinton said that she believes that the U.S. is “still in” a “full Constitutional crisis” thanks to the actions of Trump and his enablers. In the hands of Republicans, the powers of government have turned into tools for furthering their own, personal power — and that’s pretty much it. Trump sought to use the powers of the Justice Department to go against the duly documented will of the people after the election.
Hillary Clinton on ABC: "I think we're at a very dangerous, continuing high-level attack on the legitimacy of our government and the election of our president. And obviously, our former president is not only behind it, he incited it. He encouraged it and he continues to do so."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 12, 2021
Clinton pointedly commented as follows:
‘I think we not only came close to a full Constitutional crisis — I think we’re still in it… I think we’re at a very dangerous, continuing high-level attack on the legitimacy of our government and the election of our president. And obviously, our former president is not only behind it, he incited it. He encouraged it, and he continues to do so. And you have leaders of the Republican Party, who have willingly gone along, as though they’re members of a cult — not a political party, but a cult… We are still in the midst of a concerted, well-funded effort to undermine American democracy.’
Check out Clinton’s comments below:
Recently, the Senate Judiciary Committee released an interim report from its months-long and ongoing investigation to ascertain the full scope of attempts to use the levers of the Justice Department to keep Trump in power, and other investigations and public revelations have revealed their own troubling details. Trump even contemplated outright replacing the head of the Justice Department with someone (Jeffrey Clark) who’d be more likely to go along with the then-president’s lies about the election. Putting Clark in charge could have meant that the Justice Department would suddenly be in support of overturning the election. Trump backed down from elevating Clark in the face of a threat of resignations by top officials in protest.
Trump’s lies about the integrity of last year’s election also provided, of course, the explicit pretense for the riot at the Capitol in January, and the ideological perspectives that provided the underpinning for that violence have not vanished — far from it. Going forward, there’s a continued danger that even more fervent adherents of the Trump cult could be elected to power, giving them the opportunity to inflict damage on democracy.
