Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump administration official who is now a co-host on ABC’s “The View,” said on Tuesday that it would be dangerous for former President Donald Trump to serve another term in the White House.
“I will not vote for Donald Trump. And I think that should be a pretty easy thing to say,” Griffin said in a discussion on the show about Trump. “If you thought the first term of Trump was bad, buckle up.”
Griffin noted that Trump “will weaponize the federal government” even more than he did in his first term if given the chance, and mentioned that he had an “enemies list.”
She added that Trump openly expressed the desire to extrajudicially execute people who angered him while she was serving as his White House Director of Strategic Communications.
Before I resigned, I was in an Oval Office meeting with a dozen other staffers. And somebody had, he thought, leaked a story about him going to the bunker during the George Floyd protests, and he said that the person who did that should be executed.
“I cannot set off enough alarm bells about how dangerous he is and that he must be stopped at all costs,” Griffin added.
Griffin’s account confirms what Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender wrote in his book about Trump’s departure from office, entitled “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost.” Bender said that aides had recounted to him that the leaked story was “the most upset [some] had ever seen the president.”
“‘Whoever did that, they should be charged with treason!’ Trump yelled. ‘They should be executed!'” Bender wrote.
Over the course of his presidency and beyond, Trump has repeatedly suggested that critics of his should be executed for their opposition to him. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, for example, said in a book he wrote that, as president, Trump would frequently refer to reporters as “scumbags” and call for them to be executed.
Trump has said on social media that Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, deserves “a death sentence” over his alleged tax crimes.
Trump has also said that U.S. General Mark Milley, who served as the chair on the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, should be executed for not being loyal to him.
Trump’s proclivity for using violent language when discussing his political opposition suggests that voters should heed Griffin’s warnings about the dangers of another Trump term, political experts say.
In an op-ed he wrote in September, Henry Giroux, the current McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a member of Truthout’s Board of Directors, discussed Trump’s embrace of facism at length.
Trump’s vitriolic and dehumanizing rhetoric has contributed to an unprecedented culture of misinformation and truth-denying that has become so widespread since 2016 that it’s now a central feature of politics and a defining condition of the widespread violence, lawlessness and militarization shaping U.S. society.
“Like earlier fascist demagogues in Italy and Nazi Germany, Trump’s eruptions and displays of anger and rage against his alleged enemies both sanction violence and encourage his neo-Nazi followers, the police, and others to use violent behavior,” Giroux went on.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy