Historian warns Trump 'imperial presidency' will be 'huge shock' to Americans: 'Never been here before'
On July 4, 2024, the United States celebrated its 248th anniversary as a democratic republic. But with its next presidential election only four months away, many critics of presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump are warning that the U.S. will cease to be a democracy if he returns to the White House and the Project 2025 plan for a second Trump term is implemented.
Anxiety over Trump, who openly praises authoritarian figures like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has grown even more intense following the U.S. Supreme Court's controversial 6-3 immunity ruling in Trump v. the United States.
During an early July interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, historian Heather Cox Richardson emphasized that the 2024 election is unlike any other in U.S. history and the stakes are incredibly high.
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Richardson said of the High Court's immunity ruling, "By delaying that decision as long as they did, they made sure that, in fact, former President Donald Trump would not see a trial before the upcoming election…. And now, we have the idea that, in fact, the president is immune from prosecution for things that he calls official acts. This is a coup. It's a legal coup in our system."
The Boston College historian finds it ironic that this "coup" occurred before the U.S. Independence Day — as it was on July 4, 1776 that Americans declared they would not have a king when the Declaration of Independence was signed.
When Amanpour asked Richardson if Trump's desire for "retribution" is now "baked in," the Boston College historian responded, "Christiane, I don't think we know what the future is going to look like, because he have never been here as a country. That being said, I think that there are two real problems with the way Americans are looking at this situation. And that is, really, we have honored our constitution for 248 years — and since World War 2, Americans believed that the system as we have it is going to survive. They just don't think that the world we live under after World War 2 is going to go away, and it's going to be a huge shock to them to discover that it is."
Richardson added, "I think that really, in the period since 1980, there has been a movement toward this idea of an imperial presidency. And it's going to be the project of the next five months to convince Americans that this is our moment. If we do not step up now and stop this, it will not be stopped in my lifetime, anyway."
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Watch the full video at this link.
