During a Monday appearance on SiriusXM’s Joe Madison — The Black Eagle , author and former New York Times investigative reporter David Cay Johnston offered a grim prediction on life after a Donald Trump win in November, Breitbart reported.
When asked by Madison about the possibility that Trump will postpone or cancel November’s election, Johnston suggested it’s more likely the president will attempt to try instead to turn people away from the polls.
“We’ve got to get this man out of office or it’s the end of our democracy, and down that road, Joe, lie firing squads,” he said.
Johnston told Madison that Trump is a dictator, suggesting that firing squads are a logical progression of his approach to power.
“I mean, I have no, you know, I said after Donald Trump won the electoral college, that if he could find a way to have me arrested, cause he said he hates me more than any other journalist in the world, that he would do so,” he said.
Afterward, Johnston claimed that Trump lacks empathy and views other individuals not as people but as objects for his own personal gain.
“Every case that I’ve ever studied that a country has been taken over by a dictator, of course there are firing squads. And I would expect to get shot in the first round.”
Johnston has expressed these sentiments before. As reported by Salon , he previously suggested in November 2019 that firing squads lie at the end of Trump’s presidential story. He urged Americans to remain involved in the political process to retain the country’s democracy and avoid going down the path toward electing a dictator. Nevertheless, the 71-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner also warned that removing Trump will leave open room for an authoritarian to fill the power vacuum — a person that may be more organized and hard-working than the current president.
In a similar op-ed for The Washington Post , Matt Bai argued that Trump’s attacks on journalists and reporters are part of his re-election strategy. Bai pointed to the coronavirus briefings, where the president often clashed with reporters, as evidence of this purported strategy. Although Bai noted the outrage that he and his media colleagues feel over Trump’s treatment of reporters, he advised people to ignore it to avoid feeding into what he believes is a deliberate campaign strategy.
Trump has taken particular aim at members of the media as his administration continues to face criticism for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even before the spread of the coronavirus, his attacks on the media’s alleged corruption and bias against his White House have been a staple of his presidency.
