In the lead up to the release of his newest documentary, Fahrenheit 11/9, Michael Moore has been telling everyone who will listen that he believes Donald Trump might be the “last president” of the United States. On Friday’s edition of The View, he explained how that might happen.
Moore was warning that Trump could win the 2016 election just days before he did, a fact that gives his dire predictions a bit more weight than they otherwise would today. He always preferred Bernie Sanders, whom he still thinks would have beaten Trump in the general election, and worries that Democrats will put up another “same old, same old, tired, uninspiring” candidate in 2020.
But asked on Friday whom he would like to see take on Trump, Moore replied, “The honest answer to that is I don’t even know if we’re going to get to 2020 as a democracy.”
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“Everything he says is against democracy,” Moore added later. “He does not respect the rule of law. We are in deep, deep danger here. You know, democracy is not just a given. It’s not a permanent thing like your soul. It’s a very tenuous thing and it can go, and we’ve seen throughout history it can go just like that.”
In Fahrenheit 11/9, the title of which refers to the date Trump was elected, Moore draws striking parallels between 1930s Germany and our current moment in America. “I do not say that Trump is Hitler,” he says, explaining that there is a piece of satire that suggests “Hitler was Trump.”
But he does highlight the front-page editorial in a Jewish weekly newspaper right after Hitler’s inauguration that read something along the lines of, “Calm down, everybody. Yes, he’s crazy but it’s not going to be as bad as we think it’s going to be because we’re a democracy and we have a constitution. And the constitution will stop him.”
A month later, the German Parliament building burned down, an act Moore theorizes may have been caused by the Nazi Party in order to “start eliminating the rights and the freedoms of the people of Germany.”
“We have to be very careful because I do believe this will happen,” Moore said. “Whether it’s an actual terrorist attack which we’re all, god forbid, afraid it could happen again, or whether it’s something that is planned or whether it’s just some crazy nutcase—one person does something and it’s blamed on a whole group of people.”
“At that moment, my friends, please, if I can say anything this morning, when that happens, when this so-called national emergency happens, please, yes, let’s protect ourselves,” he continued. “Do not give up our rights and our freedoms. This is our democracy and I’m afraid that this president will use that moment as he does other moments to go into strongman mode.”
