Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice accused President Donald Trump of sending “troops into the streets of our cities to attack peaceful protesters.”
Maddow said, “Let me just ask you about something else about which you’ve been really outspoken, and that is what we should sort of expect over the next 83 days and that ‘small d’ democratic threat that the president will try to delegitimize the election, that he will try to mess with people’s ability to vote, that he will defy the results of the election if it turns out he loses his office. How are you thinking about those things now?”
She added, “After a lifetime in national security positions, knowing Vice President Biden as well as you know him; facing down these kinds of challenges and threats; what do you think we should all have in mind or what do you think the country should be working on to try to shore ourselves up and brace ourselves for the worst-case scenario in terms of what this president might do with the peaceful transfer of power?”
Rice said, “Rachel, this is an extraordinary circumstance we find ourselves in; we’ve never, at least in our lifetimes, had a president of the United States who has told us that he may not abide by the results of an election, has told us that he may seek to delay the election itself, has told us that he is going to cast doubt on the legitimacy of mail-in ballots and go out of his way to make it as hard as possible for Americans to exercise their constitutional right to vote. It’s unbelievable.”
Rice continued, “And then he sends troops into the streets of our cities to attack peaceful protesters. The range of possible threats that he poses to our democracy is truly quite mind-boggling. And I think it’s really important for the American people to be aware of this. And that’s before you get to —what we understand now from our intelligence community — the Russians continue to do and have stepped up their effort to interfere in our elections, with, it seems, the blessing of Donald Trump, who has said he would accept foreign help in the election and has refused to call out Russia on any number of things, least of all its involvement in the 2020 election.”
She added, “And so, the American people, first of all, have to be aware. Secondly, I believe we have to come out and vote no matter what, hopefully through absentee ballots where that’s deemed to be the safest way through early voting, but we have to vote, and the result should be overwhelming. The more resounding the outcome, the harder it is for Donald Trump to manipulate and obscure a potential loss. And we just have to be super, super vigilant to all of these different scenarios.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.