“The View” just warned audiences to take President Donald Trump seriously when he talks about his authoritarian aspirations.
Talking about how Trump and his allies shamelessly continue to toy with the idea of a third term in the White House on Monday’s episode, Whoopi Goldberg said, “Well, you-know-who told us he was going to be a dictator on day one and, damn, if he isn’t a dictator!”
Referring to former White House adviser Steve Bannon’s recent comments about “alternatives” to get around the Constitution’s two-term limit for presidents, Alyssa Farah Griffin added, “There’s certain people in Trump’s orbit who, when they tell you what they’re going to do, I really listen. And I would put Steve Bannon at the top of this list.”
“He’s somebody who has been one of the senior-most advisers to Trump since the first time that he ran, he predicted the events around Jan. 6th, the efforts to overturn the election. And I feel crazy because I feel like a conspiracy theorist talking about this!” she said.
Fellow host Sunny Hostin also pointed to Trump’s ballroom project as evidence that he’s planning to hunker down in the White House for as long as he wants.
“He is hooking up the White House because he doesn’t plan on leaving it. I don’t think he plans on leaving,” Hostin said.
“I told y’all that years ago, that he had — he was not going anywhere,” Goldberg added. “He said it. He said, ‘I want to be president for life.’ I heard him say it, I watched his lips move, and I thought, ‘He means this!’”
Co-host Ana Navarro then chimed in to say, “This is a guy who has got authoritarian envy. He goes around to these countries and he loves — he wants the parades, he wants the arches, he wants the ballrooms, he wants to be an emperor, he wants to be an authoritarian.”
“Paying no attention to the Constitution,” she added, comparing Trump’s tactics to strongmen like President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Trump refused to outright reject the possibility of a third term while speaking to the press on Sunday.
“I haven’t really thought about it. ... I have the best poll numbers I’ve ever had,” he said when asked about extending his presidency beyond January 2029, adding, “Am I not ruling it out? I mean, you’ll have to tell me.”