Donald Trump stunned the country a few days ago when the president publicly displayed just how insane he is by demanding that two years be added to his first term to “pay back for time stolen” by the Mueller investigation.
While many have decided to shrug the incident off and chalk it up to Trump losing his mind, the threat is real. Adolph Reed, Jr., professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, suggested that America should take Trump seriously on this. He said:
It may seem nuts, but I do think this is worth paying attention to.”
Here’s the tweet that inspired Trump to share and demand that he gets two extra years.
After the best week ever for @realDonaldTrump – no obstruction, no collusion, NYT admits @BarackObama did spy on his campaign, & the economy is soaring. I now support reparations-Trump should have 2 yrs added to his 1st term as pay back for time stolen by this corrupt failed coup
— Jerry Falwell (@JerryFalwellJr) May 5, 2019
Reed said, “The Trump administration obviously is contemptuous of procedural democracy, as are Republicans in Congress and elsewhere.”
The Republicans’ decades-long campaign to demonize and undermine popular and democratic institutions, suppress voting, forge a political alliance based on the most dangerously reactionary and irrationalist elements of the society and committed to eliminating all restraint to capitalist class power is particularly chilling.
The confrontation between the House Democrats and the Trump administration over access to his tax returns and the executive branch’s requirement to honor congressional subpoenas [could prove far more consequential in the long run than] the daily theater of palace politics.'”
Reed isn’t the only one concerned. Esquire’s Jack Holmes also sounded the alarm on Trump’s two-year extension:
Even if this is just another absurd trial balloon, it is the latest sign that the president may have little intention of leaving office no matter the circumstances. He has already been named—albeit as ‘Individual-1’—in one federal indictment, which led to his longtime fixer, Michael Cohen, going to prison this Monday morning. The evidence he abused his power and obstructed justice is damning…
Democratic leaders in particular must come to grips with the fact that he probably won’t leave willingly. He can’t afford to—it could land him in jail.”
Jeffrey Isaac, a political science professor at Indiana University, voiced his own concern that Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi were not taking seriously either Trump’s comments or the fact that he might refuse to leave office in 2020. He said:
I don’t believe that commentators have treated this comment with the seriousness that it deserves. And yet, alas, I fear that neither has Pelosi herself taken the full measure of the comment.
What cannot be right is to claim that Trump is a danger to the republic, and to orchestrate House investigations in a politically serious way that focuses attention on this, and at the same time to meet with Trump in the White House and even feign to do deals with him. This president must be opposed, consistently and unambiguously. Period.”
Featured image via screen capture
