Trump aide fears death of democracy if he returns
The Democrats’ shock electoral defeat in Virginia is a warning sign that the US is ready to embrace Donald Trump again – and it could lead to the death of American democracy, according to the woman who was a top aide to the ex-president.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Fiona Hill, the Durham-born, former leading Russia adviser to Mr Trump, said the Republican victory shows America’s patience with Joe Biden is already running thin, and a dangerous brand of “populism” may soon return.
She said: “What happened in Virginia is a sign people’s political timelines are very compacted, or constrained, very short, they want instantaneous results.”
She added, in reference to spending reforms: “If Biden can’t deliver, Trump will probably be back, if nothing goes through on the legislative side.”
Her comments came before Mr Biden hailed the “momentous” passage of one half of his huge spending pledges. Congress passed his $1trillion (£740billion) infrastructure bill early yesterday morning, but the Democrats remain divided over the president’s landmark tax-and-spend bill worth a further $1.75trillion.
Republican Glenn Youngkin, backed by Mr Trump, recorded a stunning victory in Virginia last week, beating the Democratic Party favourite in a state Mr Biden won by 10 points last year. Dr Hill said the result showed the “populist style has legs”.
She added that Mr Trump would “certainly bank [the Virginia result] as a victory for himself and run with it. He will certainly lay claim to anyone who wins, and denounce anyone who loses.
“I don’t see any evidence that he’s not going to run [in 2024], and I think it would be hard to see him not running”.
But she warned that if Mr Trump were to win the electoral college in 2024, without winning the popular vote, it would be an “explosive moment” for America, which could lead to civil violence.
Dr Hill said she believed Mr Trump was engaged in an “ongoing coup” against the American system with attempts to undermine the result of the 2020 election. “That’s what I’m really worried about. There are some very dark pathways this can go on. All putting us on a path to a minority government and a very tense and potentially explosive situation in the country. The deliberate pitting of people against each other is the kind of thing that leads to more civil violence.”
She predicted that if Mr Trump became president again, people would disengage from the political process and lose faith in the system. Democracy, she said, would be “dead”.
In her book, There Is Nothing for You Here, Dr Hill recounts growing up in
Bishop Auckland, Co Durham, the daughter of a coal miner, in the 1980s. She later graduated from St Andrews university, lived in Russia, and earned a PhD from Harvard, going on to serve as an intelligence analyst in the administrations of George W Bush and Barack Obama.
In 2017 she became senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council, the top Russia adviser to Mr Trump. Later, she was a key witness in Mr Trump’s first impeachment trial, over allegations that he tried to pressure Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, to investigate the Biden family.
During her career, Dr Hill has observed both Mr Trump and Vladimir Putin at close quarters. She said Mr
‘If Biden can’t deliver, Trump will probably be back, if nothing goes through on the legislative side’
‘What happened in Virginia is a sign people’s political timelines are very short, they want instantaneous results’
Trump wanted to emulate Mr Putin and become a “symbol of the state” and not beholden to a political party.
She said she believed that he thought he could be like Mr Putin. “In Trump’s interpretation of the presidency, it was all about him. There is no executive branch, just the executive, and the president has unparalleled power, no real checks and balances.”
She drew parallels between industrial decline and the rise of populism in Russia and the US. It would be “very difficult” to counter populism in the United States, she said.
“It’s a very tall order for Biden,” she added. “Much easier to be a populist. People are frustrated and more prone to populist politics and a strongman saying ‘I’m going to fix this’ when the established system fails to deliver.”
Mr Trump’s desire to transcend traditional political parties was part of why he also looked up reverently to the Queen, according to Dr Hill.
She said: “He always talked about his mother loving the Queen. To him it’s the ultimate sign of having made it, tea with the Queen, the state visit, he was genuinely obsessed with it.
“He was very deferential to her, you could tell he was in awe of her. He sort of sees her as the bastion of so many things, the enduring symbol, he wanted to have some of that reflected glory.”
She said Mr Trump had wanted to introduce his family as “one dynasty to the other” and was “disappointed the entire royal family weren’t there to welcome him”.
Dr Hill said Mr Trump thought that women had less credibility. His views of both Theresa May and Angela Merkel were affected by election setbacks, which he saw as a sign of weakness.