Trump is ‘glad to lead’ parade of liars, Bill Clinton says in new book ‘Citizen’
President-elect Donald Trump might not be the first person who decided to “cast the law and facts aside to cling to power,” writes former President Bill Clinton in his newest book, but doing so in defense of the January 2021 insurrectionists “was a parade he was glad to lead.”
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Clinton’s Citizen: My Life After the White House is his follow-up to 2004’s My Life. In an excerpt published on MSNBC last week the former president dove into the events of January 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters angrily rushed the Capitol in an attempt to interefere with the certification of the results of the 2020 election. Trump was accused of encouraging the group, something he has never flat-out denied.
Clinton writes that “efforts toward a shared America are made harder when one party believes that the primary purpose of power is to hang on to it as long as you can.” To illustate that point, he recalled his own second term, when former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told Clinton’s chief of staff Erskine Bowles “that I was a great politician but was at a disadvantage in dealing with the more militant Republicans because I wasted time and energy on efforts that didn’t increase the Democrats’ power.”
Gingrich then asked, “The president really believes we should all live under the same set of rules, doesn’t he?” Clinton continues. Erskine replied yes, because “We think that’s what a real democracy requires.” Gingrich disagreed and noted, “We think everyone we elect or appoint should first do what’s best for our party. Then we can talk about the rest.”
This appears to be how Trump also operates, Clinton adds. The Insurrection itself was “the most extreme example of this single-minded determination to grab and hold on to power at all costs.”
The former president also detailed the “method to Trump’s madness” that led to the events of Jan. 6. The hope appeared to be, Clinton writes, that the votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin could have been recounted in Trump’s favor, which would have tied the electoral college vote and pushed the results to the House of Representatives, which would have likely voted him in.
As we all now know, that didn’t happen, and his supporters decided to take matters into their own hands, the consequences of which the United States still must wrestle with to this day.
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