CNN’s Chris Wallace Straight-Up Asks ‘Is Donald Trump a Dictator-In-Waiting’ — Pushes Back On ‘No’ Answer

CNN anchor Chris Wallace straight-up asked his panel “Is Donald Trump a dictator in waiting?” — and pushed back when one panelist argued he was just being like Obama.

Journalists Kristen Soltis Anderson, Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Reihan Salam, and Kara Swisher joined Wallace for this week’s edition of CNN’s The Chris Wallace Show on Saturday morning, during which Wallace joined the others in pushing back when Salam insisted Trump’s “dictator” remarks were the same as a benign statement former President Barack Obama once made:

CHRIS WALLACE: In this recent town hall This week, his buddy Sean Hannity was at pains to try to say to him, you know, you’re not going to be a dictator, you’re not going to be a bad guy, you’re not going to abuse power. Here’s how that went.

DONALD TRUMP: He says, you’re not going to be a dictator, are you? I said, No, no, no. Other than day one! We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.

CHRIS WALLACE: So, Reihan, is Donald Trump a dictator in waiting? Or is he just playing one?

REIHAN SALAM: Well, look, what he was saying in that moment is something very similar to what Barack Obama said back in 2014 at his first cabinet meeting. He said, “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone.”.

And what he meant by that is that if Congress does not do what I want them to do, I can sign executive actions and I can use my phone to rally outside groups to create pressure on Congress to get things done.

And the big, deeper problem, you’ve seen that under President Obama, under President Trump, under President Biden, is that Congress has abdicated its responsibility and better for worse, the public wants a strong president.

KARA SWISHER: Come on! (crosstalk) Nobody has Obama. I know nobody has. He’s using the term dictator. He’s trying to be scared. All this leakage about the Heritage and these groups, they’re going to get rid of everyone. Kash Patel saying, you know, we’re going to come get the media

CHRIS WALLACE: Who is a former advisor to Trump, and came out after the meeting this week.

KARA SWISHER: J.D. Vance suing, asking the just department to investigate this columnist. He’s a persistent clown on these things. It’s all part of the scare.

CHRIS WALLACE: Vance, not the columnist.

KARA SWISHER: No, the columnist was fine. It was it was a little bit much.

CHRIS WALLACE: All right. But anyway.

KARA SWISHER: In any case, this is very different. It’s a plan to try to sort of put the fear into people.

CHRIS WALLACE: And I want to I want to ask you, Lulu, because I can I just I could feel your hackles even though I wasn’t looking at you. How do you compare what Donald Trump is saying and doing to Obama saying, I’ve got to, after he had lost control of Congress? “I’ve got a pen and a phone.”

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO: These are two different things! Nobody asked President Obama, are you a dictator? People say that you’re a dictator. And in response to that, he said, I have a pen and a piece of paper and I can do what I want.

This was a direct question where actually, Hannity was setting up a softball for former President Trump, where you were saying, hey, people are worried about this. People are writing about this because of some of your statements. Why don’t you calm them down?

And his response was, actually, guess what, guys, I can do it. And it wasn’t. And you know what the most chilling part of that was? Which you cut off. It was the response of the crowd, which was to cheer because that’s what they like about him. They like that he.

CHRIS WALLACE: Don’t be so respectful.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO: Like that he has authoritarian tendencies.

REIHAN SALAM: Look, respectfully, the real issue is that we have a broken constitutional system. And the reason it’s broken is because Congress has basically said we are going to cede the authority that belongs to us under the Constitution to a whole slew of three agencies.

CHRIS WALLACE: There’s that broken congressional system? So the answer is to suspend the Constitution, to weaponize the Justice Department and to conduct mass deportation?

KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON: Congress should try to reclaim some of its power. But the reality is that it’s not just that Donald Trump wants to put in place a lot of executive orders. The thing that worries me about a second Trump term is that, to quote the great Taylor Swift, he’s dressing for revenge. That he is coming to look at the White House in the second term with an idea of I am going to try to do all the things that I couldn’t do last time. I’m going to put in place people that aren’t going to sell me out. And that’s where things begin to get a little bit scary.

Watch above via CNN’s The Chris Wallace Show.