Former US Defence Secretary William Cohen on Tuesday slammed Donald Trump’s administration for acting like a “dictatorship” as the president refuses to acknowledge defeat in the 2020 election.
“We’re witnessing the decimation of the democratic institutions which the American people have come to expect will be nonpolitical in terms of our national security,” Cohen told CNN’s Don Lemon.
Lemon asked Cohen, a GOP former senator for Maine who led the Pentagon during Bill Clinton’s presidency, to comment on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s refusal to recognize the victory of President-elect Joe Biden.
“There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” Pompeo told reporters Tuesday. Trump has refused to concede the election, promoted baseless conspiracy theories about mass voter fraud and is purging the Department of Defense of his critics.
He praised Pompeo on Twitter:
“My reaction is the way they are conducting themselves is more akin to a dictatorship than a democracy,” Cohen told Lemon.
“And I think the State Department has been politicised just like the DOD has tried to be politicised, and what we’ve done to undermine the intelligence community and other agencies,” he added. “I think it’s consistent with what has been taking place for four years now.”
Check out the interview here: