Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the reelection of former President Trump would be the “end of democracy” in an interview released Saturday by The Guardian.
“It will be the end of democracy, functional democracy,” Sanders said in the interview.
The Vermont senator also said in the interview that he thinks that another round of Trump as the president will be a lot more extreme than the first.
“He’s made that clear,” Sanders said. “There’s a lot of personal bitterness, he’s a bitter man, having gone through four indictments, humiliated, he’s going to take it out on his enemies. We’ve got to explain to the American people what that means to them — what the collapse of American democracy will mean to all of us.”
Sanders’s words echo those President Biden made in a recent campaign speech during which he said that Trump’s return to the presidency would risk American democracy. The president highlighted the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol in an attempt to cement a point about Trump and other Republicans espousing a kind of extremism that was seen by the world on that day.
But Trump is really the glue that holds many of these people together. I don’t follow conservative politics too closely but I don’t see someone else that has his ability to hold the ultra-right together as he has done. Not saying there aren’t a large pool of con artists that are fighting to take his place when he is gone. I think there are quite a few people that want that power and I think that is going to breed a shit show for the far right (lots of infighting).
Of course if he gets re-elected and has a favorable Congress then well established laws and political norms can and will be changed to allow for something of a monarchy which takes the above off the table. That is his family becomes the de-facto ruling family.
But if he doesn’t get re-elected or has a Congress that will fight and make his tenure difficult, and when he dies I think the far-right is going to fracture with 3 or 4 new crazy people trying to take over what Trump has held together.