Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
– Getty Images for HuluFormer Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is warning that the US may not survive another Trump presidency or White House bid, especially were it to come coupled with Republican control of Congress.
The 2016 Democratic nominee joined NBC’s Willie Geist for an interview that aired on Sunday TODAY in which she gave a stark prediction about the lengths Mr Trump and his Republican allies would go to change the fabric of US politics should they achieve power again.
“If I were a betting person right now, I’d say Trump is going to run again,” said Ms Clinton, who went on to say that unless the former president was “not held accountable”, apparently referring to the events of January 6, he would be emboldened to run again.
In her interview, Ms Clinton did not specifically mention 6 January, or the ongoing campaign of misinformation and outright lies the former president and his allies have spread about the 2020 election since it occurred.
Ms Clinton seemed to argue that the truest danger lay in Mr Trump not attempting to seize office via false claims of voter fraud and pressure on local officials to remain loyal, but rather in him being elected again and having the power of the presidency behind him.
“I think that could be the end of our democracy [were Trump to be elected president again],” she said.
“Not too be too pointed about it, but I want people to understand that this could be a make-or-break point. If he or someone of his ilk were once again to be elected president, especially if he had a Congress that would do his bidding, you will not recognise our country,” said Ms Clinton.
Many political experts and analysts have taken to referring to the ongoing campaign to sow mistrust in US elections as a “slow-moving coup” being orchestrated by Mr Trump ahead of another White House run.
In recent weeks, it has been revealed that members of Mr Trump’s inner circle supported the idea of seizing control of the government via declaring a “national security emergency” and throwing out election results in states where Mr Trump and his allies baselessly alleged wide-scale fraud. Evidence of the plan was provided to a House select committee investigating 6 January by Mark Meadows, Mr Trump’s final White House chief of staff.
That plan never came to fruition, as Vice President Mike Pence refused to make any attempts to interfere in the certification of the Electoral College vote on January 6 after Mr Trump’s supporters attacked the US Capitol and tried to prevent the vote from occurring in the Senate.
Mr Trump’s efforts to pressure election officials in Georgia to “find” thousands of ballots in his favor after the 2020 election remain under criminal inquiry in the state, and lawyers connected to the former president now face massive defamation suits from voting machine companies that were the target of many of the Trump circle’s false claims.
