Clyburn: ‘We’re teetering on’ giving president ‘authority to be dictator’

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Tuesday that he sees parallels between the conduct of Republicans following President Trump’s electoral defeat last week and Germany in the 1930s when the Nazi Party came to power.

In an interview with CNN, the high-ranking House Democrat said that the U.S. was “teetering” on the edge of fascism, warning that the president’s attempts to overturn the results of last Tuesday’s election raised the possibility that Trump could become a “dictator.”

“I’ve been telling people for a long time now, I’m beginning to see what happened in Germany back in the 1930s,” Clyburn told host Chris Cuomo.

“I never thought that could happen in this country. How do you elect a person president, then all of a sudden give him the authority to be dictator? That’s what we’re teetering on here,” he continued.

House Majority Whip Rep. Jim Clyburn predicts Republicans will soon begin to acknowledge that President Trump has lost the election.

“I do believe that we are in for some rough sledding, but I don’t think it’s going to get any more ugly than it already has been.” pic.twitter.com/t5ZfpapXRx

— Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) November 11, 2020

Clyburn added that he did not expect Trump to transition into an authoritarian figure, but said that the U.S. was in for some “rough sledding” as the president contests the results of the election, which was called for his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, on Saturday.

“I do believe that we are in for some rough sledding, but I don’t think it’s going to get any more ugly than it already has been,” said the House majority whip.

Clyburn was an early backer of Biden’s campaign. His endorsement of the former vice president ahead of the South Carolina primary is credited with reviving the president-elect’s campaign, which at the time faced a surging challenge from his main primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Biden has called Trump’s refusal to accept the presidential election results “pathetic” but has dismissed the idea that the president will not vacate the White House in January.

Trump’s refusal to concede “does not change the dynamic at all in what we’re able to do,” Biden said at a press conference this week, adding, “We don’t see anything that’s slowing us down, quite frankly.”