On a podcast aired Friday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insinuated that her former adversary, ex-President Trump, would not hesitate to “eliminate his opponents” if re-elected.
Clinton made these remarks during an episode of the “Democracy Docket” podcast hosted by Marc Elias, a Democratic election attorney who previously held the position of general counsel on her 2016 presidential campaign.
During their discussion, Clinton likened Trump’s behavior to that of Russian President Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian leaders, describing the potential of his return to the White House as “extremely alarming.”
“Trump was like, you know, just gaga over Putin because Putin does what Trump would like to do: Kill his opposition, imprison his opposition, drive journalists and others into exile, rule without any check or balance,” Clinton said.
“That’s what Trump really wants,” she continued. “And so we have to be very conscious of how he sees the world because, in that world, he only sees strongmen leaders. He sees Putin, he sees Xi, he sees Kim Jong-un in North Korea. Those are the people he is modeling himself after, and we’ve been down this road in our, you know, world history. We sure don’t want to go down that again.”
Following her loss to Trump in the 2016 election, Clinton has frequently asserted that Trump acts in the interest of Russia and that Putin intervened in the election to secure her defeat. She has forecasted that if Trump prevails over Biden in November, he will seek to withdraw the U.S. from NATO and govern as an authoritarian within the country.
“My view, having negotiated with Putin, and knowing one of the reasons he went after me is because he knew I would deal with him in an appropriate way, and Trump would basically do whatever he wanted, it’s really important to think about what could happen to our world with Trump back in the White House,” Clinton told Elias in Friday’s podcast.
“Withdrawing us from NATO, not caring about what happens with Europe … The idea that he wants Ukraine to fail. The idea that he doesn’t want us to be able to surveil our enemies. This is a very scary prospect,” she said.
