A pair of NeverTrump Republicans blasted “Vichy” Republicans for collaborating with the “incredibly erratic and unpredictable” President Trump, whom they suggested would “probably be a dictator by now” were it not for our country’s system of checks and balances.
Eliot Cohen, who served in the State Department under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and co-founded the now defunct Neo-Conservative think tank “Project for the New American Century,” along with Max Boot, another neo-Con who currently serves as a fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, blasted President Trump’s first year in office in an interview with Politico.
Despite admitting “some of the worst-case scenarios that we imagined have yet, mercifully, come to pass,” Boot labeled President Trump “incredibly erratic and unpredictable” and warned he still may destroy NATO, launch a trade war with China, lift sanctions on Russia, or start a war with North Korea.
“It’s true, they haven’t started World War III yet,” Cohen said. “That’s a pretty low bar.”
While much of their fears are, unsurprisingly, directed at President Trump’s foreign policy, the pair also leveled criticism at Trump’s domestic agenda, which Boot labeled “very corrosive to the future of American democracy.”
“In many ways, the damage he is doing at home is even worse, where he’s undermining the rule of law. He’s obstructing justice.” He’s lending the support of the presidency to monsters like Roy Moore. He is exacerbating race relations,” Boot said. “He is engaging in the most blatant xenophobia, racism and general bigotry that we have seen from the White House.”
Were it not for our country’s system of checks and balances, Boot suggested, Trump would likely have already become a dictator in the mold of Benito Mussolini, Juan Peron or Hugo Chavez.
“Look, the good news story of the first year of the Trump presidency is that there are checks and balances,” he said. “Trump as a personality type is probably no different from a Mussolini, a Peron, a Chavez. And if you were operating in Argentina or Italy, he would probably be a dictator by now.”
Throughout the interview, Boot and Cohen expressed dismay at the personal toll Trump’s election has taken on them, namely broken friendships with “Vichy Republicans” who have “permanently sullied themselves” by collaborating with the Trump administration.
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