Madeleine Albright, a former Secretary of State, said that she thinks President Trump is the “most anti-democratic president that I have studied in American history.”
Albright, who served the Clinton administration, wrote a new book: “Fascism: A Warning” that comes out next week. She told NPR on Monday that the U.S. isn’t fulfilling its role as a democratic leader in the world under Trump.
“I believe very much that democracy in the United States is resilient [and] that people can be skeptical about things that are going on, but I really am afraid that we are taking things for granted,” she said.
The former Secretary of State said that Trump’s attacks on the judicial system, the electoral process, minorities and his attempts to undermine the press are indicative that his instincts aren’t democratic.
“I’ve picked up that phrase ‘see something, say something,’ and I am seeing some things that are the kinds of things that we have seen in other countries, and so I am saying not only should we say something, but we have to do something about it,” Albright said.
“We normally have believed that the president tells the truth. And I know I’m very worried about the fact that there are deliberate ways of misstating the issue, and then the people think, ‘If the president said it, it must be right,’ when it’s just a deliberate untruth,” she continued.
Albright has criticized Trump before, she said last year that his “disdain for diplomacy” is driving an exodus of staffers from the State Department and creating a “national security emergency.”