Hillary Clinton forecasts when US democracy could end
Hillary Clinton has warned that American democracy may not survive another four years of Donald Trump in the White House, should the Republican win the 2024 election.
The former US secretary of state and 2016 democratic nominee shared her concerns in an interview with NBC’s Willie Geist that was aired on Sunday. Clinton claimed that if Trump “or someone of his ilk were, once again, to be elected president, and if especially he had a congress that would do his bidding, you will not recognize our country.” She added that a Trump victory in 2024 “could be the end of our democracy.”
Trump’s rival in the 2016 presidential race opined that the firebrand Republican would run again in 2024 unless he was “held accountable.” Clinton did not specify, though, what exactly the 45th US president was guilty of, in her opinion. The 2016 Democratic nominee, at the same time, dismissed calls by Trump’s supporters to “lock [her] up” as an “absurd and dangerous attack,” adding that the people who were yelling this at her supposedly “had no idea what they were talking about” and “were being instigated to do that.”
The anti-Clinton chant was popularized by Trump during his 2016 election campaign, calling for her prosecution over her alleged careless handling of classified information while serving as the US secretary of state. The scandal centers on Clinton’s use of a private email server for her work-related communications, instead of a protected, government-controlled one.
In that same interview aired on Sunday, Clinton admitted she had not prepared a concession speech back in 2016, describing Trump’s victory as a “great loss, not just for me, but for our country.” Clinton went on to say that she had “hoped for the best from Donald Trump,” but her expectations had been dampened when she heard Trump’s “outrageous” inauguration speech, which lacked a single “grace note,” according to the former secretary of state.
Clinton concluded by calling on America to decide whether it was a “grown-up country” standing up to “lies” and an “organized effort to undermine America’s rule of law institutions.”
Trump, for his part, made it clear last month that he was “certainly thinking about” running for president in 2024, adding that he would probably make an announcement after the 2022 midterm elections, which will decide the makeup of the House of Representatives and also partly the Senate.
A House select committee is still looking into whether the former president had instigated or at least been aware of the demonstrators’ plans ahead of the January 6 riot on the Capitol, when hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the building, with one protester being fatally shot in the process, and scores of police officers and rioters alike sustaining injuries.
