Media

Former aide: Trump would ‘absolutely’ impose some form of autocracy in second term

by Maureen Breslin - 11/08/21 4:00 PM ET

Alyssa Farah, an ex-aide to former President Trump, says she’s deeply concerned about him potentially running in 2024, believing that, given a second term, he would undermine democracy and “weaponize” the government against his political opponents.

CNN’s Jake Tapper said in a recent interview with Farah, who served as a White House communications director and assistant to the president, that Trump “challenged our institutions near to the breaking point,” asking if she believed that he would try to impose “some sort of autocracy” if he returned to the Oval Office.

“I think he absolutely would,” she replied. “There were things he wanted to do while in power the first time that were well beyond the scope of what the U.S. president should be able to do, but oftentimes it was simply the motivation of simply hoping to win reelection that kept him from doing things. It’s very different in a second term, and I think that’s what scares me the most.”

Trump, she said, would “weaponize the Justice Department against political opponents, going after the free press; he would certainly be open to using the military for political reasons as well.”

Tapper responded that he found those ideas “terrifying.”

Farah resigned from the Trump White House about a month after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. Though at the time she called it “the honor of a lifetime” to serve in his administration, her feelings changed in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed Congress in an attempt to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential vote.

On Jan. 8, she said that Trump should “seriously consider” resigning and acknowledging that his allegations of widespread voter fraud were false, which he has given no indication of doing.

Farah has been a vocal Trump critic in the months since.