Former Senator Claire McCaskill pointed out what she believes is a key difference that makes former President Donald Trump “even more dangerous” than brutal 20th century dictators like Italy’s Benito Mussolini and Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler.
“A lot of people have tried to draw similarities between Mussolini and Hitler and the use of the terminology like vermin and the drive that those men had towards autocracy and dictatorship,” McCaskill told MSNBC’s Alicia Menendez.
“The difference, though, I think makes Donald Trump even more dangerous. And that is he has no philosophy he believes in,” McCaskill continued. “He’s not trying to expand the boundaries of the United States of America, he’s not trying to overcome a neighbouring country like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is in Ukraine, he’s not going through some grandiose scheme of international dominance.”
This, in McCaskill’s view, makes the former president and current Republican 2024 front-runner a chilling threat.
Trump just wants “to look in the mirror and see a guy who’s president,” she claimed. “All he cares about is selfish, self-promotion. That’s the only philosophy he has, which makes him even more dangerous because he has actually said out loud it would be OK to terminate the Constitution to keep him in power. He said this. He actually said those words.”
“The irony is all these supposed conservative folks that have populated the Republican Party, often around with their thumb in their mouth, going, “Well, yeah, OK. I guess so.’ It’s bizarre,” McCaskill added.
The former Missouri Democratic senator’s commentary came amid an uptick in concern over Trump’s continued and now increasingly vocal embrace of authoritarianism and as reports emerge of his plans should he win back the White House, from mass deportations and camps for immigrants to weaponizing the Justice Department against his opponents and critics.
Watch McCaskill’s comments here: