David Axelrod, a CNN commentator who was a former advisor to Barack Obama, spoke out on Wednesday to claim that Donald Trump tried to steal last year’s election.
“We can now see for ourselves in black and white just how serious this attempt was to overturn the results of a free and fair democratic election here in the United States,” said host Wolf Blitzer. “How dangerous was this effort?”
“I mean, we’ve never seen anything like it in our lifetimes…I’m old enough to remember a thing called the Saturday Night Massacre during Watergate when one after another Justice Department officials resigned rather than allow — rather than follow the orders of Richard Nixon to fire a special prosecutor who was looking into the Watergate break-in and was pursuing subpoenas against the White House,” Axelrod said.
“And that ultimately led to the unraveling of Richard Nixon,” he added. “Richard Nixon was a choir boy compared to this.”
“This was an attempt to essentially steal an American election, an election for the presidency using the Justice Department as a front to do it,” Axelrod continued. “It’s the most appalling, disturbing thing you can imagine, and the only thing that disturbs me more is that the architect of that is currently the frontrunner for the nomination of his party to run again.”
“Imagine if Donald Trump got this power in his hands again,” he concluded. “You know, he was frustrated that he couldn’t get Justice Department officials to hew to his wishes on this. I don’t think he’d make that mistake again, and that’s a very, very disturbing prospect for this country.”
Axelrod had spoken out earlier in the week to defend Obama for planning a massive birthday party for himself this weekend. Obama has since downsized the guest list due to fears over COVID-19.
“They’ve been concerned about the virus from the beginning, asking invited guests if they had been vaccinated, requesting that they get a test proximate to the event,” he said. “But when this was planned, the situation was quite different. So they responded to the changing circumstances.”
This piece was written by James Samson on August 5, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.