Madeleine Albright, who served as Secretary of State during part of the Clinton administration, criticized President Trump during an interview with NPR.
The interviewer read an excerpt about Trump from Albright’s forthcoming book and posed the question, “Do you think that President Trump has the instincts of an authoritarian leader?”
Albright responded, “I think that he is the most anti-democratic president that we have had in modern history and that his instincts are really in that direction.”
NPR provided some “Interview Highlights,” including quotes in which Albright said:
What he's trying to do is undermine the press and [he] has disdain for the judiciary, and the electoral process and minorities, and I think that his instincts are not ones that are democratic. He is interested, basically, I think, in exacerbating those divisions that I talked about. ... I've picked up that phrase "see something, say something," and I am seeing some things that are the kinds of things that we have seen in other countries, and so I am saying not only should we say something, but we have to do something about it. ...
I think people may disagree with the president of the opposing party ... but we normally have believed that the president tells the truth. And I know I'm very worried about the fact that there are deliberate ways of misstating the issue, and then the people think, "If the president said it, it must be right," when it's just a deliberate untruth.
Albright, who describes herself as a “passionate democrat” in her Twitter bio, also said that President Trump is swayed by whoever has most recently spoken to him about an issue.
In a quote that NPR said was on the topic of “John Bolton's appointment as national security adviser,” Albright said: “And frankly, part of the problem is ... that [Trump] listens to the last person who has talked to him, and the national security adviser is most often the last person, so I am concerned about that.”
In a quote that NPR described as pertaining to “President Trump's "America First" ideology and criticism of NATO,” Albright said that the President portrays America as a “victim”—she disagreed with this notion and decried what she called “totally anti-American foreign policy.”
“What Trump is doing is making America seem like a victim. Everything is somebody else's fault: Countries are taking advantage of us. The Mexicans are sending drug dealers. Countries are not paying their dues. The trading system is unfair. And by making Americans seem like victims all the time, it then is able to, again, make the divisions stronger in terms of who is with us, who is not with us, and it's totally anti-American foreign policy. And so I think it's very, very worrisome in terms of this victimhood.”