Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said President Donald Trump had brought an “authoritarian state structure” to the United States.
Merkley said, “I was just a determined to ring the alarm bells about the authoritarian take over. What we have seen around the world is democracies no longer die because men with guns go in and take it over. Instead, it’s electeds to erode the separation of powers, the checks and balances. If you have a rubber stamp Congress, if you have a court that delivers more power to the executive, if you have an aggressive executive suddenly you have lost you’re a democracy and you have an authoritarian state structure. It is here now.”
He added, “The fact that you, the government, will use its power over licenses or permits to, blackmail law firms and blackmail broadcast entities about what they can put on the air, tell them what comedian can can crack what kind of jokes, I mean this is the encroaching authoritarian control that we have seen happen in country after country after country all over the world. It’s a replacement of government by and for the people with government by and for the powerful. It includes the president grabbing the power of the purse constitutionally belonging to Congress and take it and put it in the executive.”
Follow Pam Key on X @pamkeyNEN
Read the full article here