House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) said Friday on “The Situation Room” that if Republicans led by former President Donald Trump win majorities in next week’s midterm elections, we are “going to see this democracy come to a crashing halt.”
Anchor Brianna Keilar asked, “You recently compared America right now to Germany in the early 1930s. That’s what you said. And you said that we’re on track to repeat what happened in Germany here in America. Can you explain what you see happening here in America that prompted you to say that?”
Clyburn said, “All you have to do is look at history. Remember, I’ve studied history all of my life. I used to teach it. And what I see lining up in this country, and there are a lot of people who are beginning to say this now, I’ve been saying it since 2018, when I said that Trump was not planning to give up the presidency a lot of people gave me a hard time for having said that. Now we see on January 6, he was not planning to give up the presidency. And I’ll tell you something else if the voters do not intercede, we are going to see this democracy come to a crashing halt. This democracy has existed because people have been free to participate in it. When you are setting up committees that can overturn the results of an election, that is what autocracies are born of. Saying we’re going to make it a crime to give anybody a bottle of water standing in line for four or five hours that’s the kind of stuff that autocracies are made of. That’s what I’m talking about. So you go back and look at Germany, who duly elected Adolph Hitler to be their chancellor, and then he went about the business of discrediting the press. What did the former president say? The press is the enemy of the people. That’s what an autocracy made of. We better get real.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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