With less than eight days away from the general election, polls show that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is headed for victory.
However, some Democrats worry that President Donald Trump will pull out a surprise victory similar to his shocking upset in 2016 — despite a steady polling lead for Biden.
In an interview with The New York Times’ “Sway” podcast, Clinton was asked if she was nervous that Trump might pressure the Department of Justice to prosecute her if he wins.
She said, “No. I don’t feel any fear, because I know there’s no basis for any of it. But it’s expensive, it’s annoying, it’s an abuse of power, it’s a misuse of the justice system.”
“So it’s a massive diversion, but it takes time, energy, and resources to defend yourself, and nobody wants that,” she added.
Host Kara Swisher asked if Clinton thought “that will manifest itself” if Trump wins re-election.
She responded, “Look, I mean, I can’t entertain the idea of him winning, so let’s just preface it by that.”
“No. It would cause cognitive dissonance of a grave degree,” she added.
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
She explained, “Well, because it makes me literally sick to my stomach to think that we’d have four more years of this abuse and destruction of our institutions, and damaging of our norms and our values, and lessening of our leadership, and the list goes on.”
“But there’s no doubt that he would do everything he could to attack and punish anyone who was, in his view, an adversary. And he would be aided and abetted, sadly, by both elected and appointed officials. So, of course, one of the most important accomplishments that I hope we see in this election is a Democratic Senate, where that would be the check that we would need against further abuse of power.”
Additionally, Clinton argued that the president does not have “any boundaries” or “any conscience.”
“He’s obviously not a moral, truthful man. So he will do whatever he can to lift himself up,” she said.
Finally, Clinton claimed that Trump “lives with this specter of illegitimacy” and that he “knows more about how he got really elected than we still do.”
The latter part of her comment appeared to be a reference to the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether members of Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russian officials to influence the outcome of that election.
Mueller concluded that he did not find evidence that proved members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russian operatives to swing the election.