Former US Defence Secretary Mark Esper on Tuesday envisioned a “very bad situation” if Donald Trump wins the 2024 election.
“I won’t say as far as dystopian but you would see so much of what we’ve come to know and experience, so much of the global order, the rules, the regulations and norms that have made us all prosperous and allow us to advance and grow over the decades to really slowly erode and collapse,” Esper, who Trump axed after the 2020 election, told MSNBC’s Katy Tur.
Esper predicted Trump would stock his government with loyalists. The “litmus test going forward” would be “loyalty first and competence will be somewhere way down the list,” he said in a video shared online by Mediaite.
“And that’s troubling.”
The former cabinet member suggested Trump during his first term learned how to manipulate the levers of power and therefore have “four years to go at it and really chip away at the institutions of government and at our norms.”
“He’ll be able to enact his policy of revenge that he’s been talking about and retribution. And look, it’s quite a dangerous time for our democracy if that were to happen,” he warned.