Former President Bill Clinton says President Donald Trump is paying a price for his bullying.
“We’ve never seen anything like this before in my lifetime,” Clinton said of the Trump administration in an interview on CBS News Sunday Morning.
“Somebody that says, ‘Whatever I want should be the law of the land. It’s my way or the highway.’ And most Americans don’t agree with that,” Clinton said. “But I like to think that he’s paid a price for this, you know, name-calling and throwing his weight around. I think it’s made him less popular.”
Trump has led a MAGAworld feud against the judiciary, labeling judges “radical leftists” in numerous rants for issuing rulings that block the implementation of his divisive policies.
A poll earlier found that about 6 in 10 American adults believe Trump has “gone too far” in using his presidential power to enact his sweeping agenda.
Clinton also said Democrats should focus on gubernatorial races and winning back the House of Representatives to counter the Trump agenda.
“Look, only elections are going to change this,” Clinton said. “Someone needs to stand up and say, ‘Damn it, what we have in common matters more. We cannot throw the legacy of this country away. We cannot destroy other people’s trust in us.’”
Clinton said the court system was the most effective method of stopping Trump, even as Trump has taken a battering ram to the judiciary.
“He is looking for ways to basically defy all these court orders,” Clinton said. “But I think he’ll have a hard time doing that. And if he does, I think it will hurt him in America.”
“I do think the courts are getting their dander up. I think that him shutting law firms out of representing their clients before federal agencies and in federal buildings because he doesn’t agree with their position—that ain’t America,” he added. “We’ve never done that. The whole purpose of having a legal system is to have both sides be heard.”
Clinton also came to the defense of Joe Biden amid widespread concerns about the state of his mental fitness following the release of Original Sin, a book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson that delved into Biden’s cognitive decline.
Clinton said he had no interest in reading the bombshell book because Biden was “in good shape” the last time they saw each other.
“The book didn’t register with me because I never saw him that way,” he said. “He’s not president anymore, and I think he did a good job, and I think we are facing challenges today without precedent in our history, and some people are trying to use this as a way to blame him for the fact that Trump was reelected.”
Biden earlier touted that he could take on Tapper and Thompson in a fight after their book triggered bipartisan criticism of his mental capabilities.
“You can see that I’m mentally incompetent, and I can’t walk, and I can beat the hell out of both of them,” he said, seemingly referring to Tapper and Thompson.
