President Donald Trump could savage America in vengeful in fury if he’s defeated at the polls, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman warned Monday.
“If the president does lose, does contest the vote, does create massive discrediting of the outcome, we could have a prolonged period where we don’t have a legitimate transfer of power for the first time in our history,” Friedman told Chris Cuomo on CNN.
“I believe the stress out of that, the economic dislocation and the violence of that could be just terrible. I’m praying that doesn’t happen, but I think that we have to realize that given the extreme nature of this president, given the fact that he has no bottom, it’s very clear” that worst-case scenarios could happen, he warned.
When Democrat Al Gore graciously lost in a very close 2000 election ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, he “took a bullet for the country,” said Friedman.
“But Donald Trump will put a bullet into the country,” Friedman continued. “If you don’t think that’s true, then you haven’t been paying attention the last four years.”
Friedman added: “When you break things, when institutions break, when norms break, in a fundamental way, they are very, very hard to put back together.”
And the Republican Party won’t help, he said.
Friedman slammed the GOP under Trump as a “giant political brothel that basically rents itself out by the night to whoever will energize its base — whether it was Sarah Palin or the tea party or Trump. Unfortunately, for the last few years the red light has always been on.”
He added: “We can’t count on them now. The only thing we can count on are the American people.”
Check out the rest of the interview in the video at the top.
