By CNN,Ian Schwartz,Stacey Abrams
Copyright realclearpolitics
Back to Videos
Stacey Abrams: We Can Not Allow Trump To Exploit Charlie Kirk’s Assassination To Advance Authoritarian Rule
|
Posted By Ian Schwartz
On Date September 16, 2025
Stacey Abrams: We Can Not Allow Trump To Exploit Charlie Kirk’s Assassination To Advance Authoritarian Rule0 seconds of 1 minute, 28 secondsVolume 90%Press shift question mark to access a list of keyboard shortcutsKeyboard ShortcutsShortcuts Open/Close/ or ?Play/PauseSPACEIncrease Volume�Decrease Volume�Seek Forward�Seek Backward�Captions On/OffcFullscreen/Exit FullscreenfMute/UnmutemDecrease Caption Size-Increase Caption Size+ or =Seek %0-9
Next UpKash Patel vs. Sen. Schiff: You Are The Biggest Fraud To Ever Sit In The Senate, “You Are A Political Buffoon At Best”02:15http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/09/16/stacey_abrams_we_can_not_allow_trump_to_exploit_charlie_kirks_assassination_to_advance_authoritarian_rule.htmlCopied
Live00:1601:1201:29More Videos02:15Kash Patel vs. Sen. Schiff: You Are The Biggest Fraud To Ever Sit In The Senate, “You Are A Political Buffoon At Best”02:32Jesse Watters: Murder Is Not About Free Speech, This Isn’t Cancel Culture04:08Brit Hume: Outpouring For Charlie Kirk Shows He Had A Much Bigger Impact On The Country Than We May Have Known05:07Bannon: Whats Going On In The Mormon Church? Why Are There More LGBTQ Flags In Salt Lake City Than American Flags?02:14Stephen Miller: We Will Dismantle And Destroy “Terrorist Networks” That Led To Charlie Kirk Assassination03:27Sen. Chuck Grassley: Whistleblower Documents Show Biden’s FBI Targeted Charlie Kirk And Turning Point USA02:59Hemingway: It Doesn’t Stop Until The Power Of The State Is Used To Deconstruct Left-Wing Terror Networks09:35Tucker Carlson: I Learned From Charlie Kirk How To Disagree With People On Topics You Take Seriously Without Hating Them04:34Jesse Watters: People Who Celebrate Charlie Kirk’s Death Should Be Shunned From Society, These Sadists Walk Amongst Us02:55Utah DA: Kirk Assassin Became More Political, Was “Becoming More Pro-Gay And Trans Rights Oriented”Close
In an interview with CNN’s Audie Cornish, Stacey Abrams expressed concern that President Donald Trump may use the assassination of Charlie Kirk to advance authoritarian rule.
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Stacey Abrams joins me now. Welcome.
STACEY ABRAMS, (D) FORMER GEORGIA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you for having me.
CORNISH: So, we wanted to talk to you because you’re among the folks who you do put money, right, behind liberal causes, your concerns about voter suppression. What are your concerns about the White House talking this way about what they’re calling radical left groups?
ABRAMS: I think it’s important that we begin understanding that this is not about left versus right. This is about American autocracy versus American democracy. And if we allow ourselves to get pulled into this false flag conversation, what we risk is losing access to the democracy that gave us free speech, that will also invoke the rule of law to hold accountable anyone who undertakes the act of political violence.
But we cannot allow this heinous murder to be exploited as an excuse for the advance of authoritarian rule, which is what we are watching happen. That is step nine in the playbook of autocrats around the world, that you take advantage of political violence, that you normalize it, but that you also use it as an excuse to justify an expansion of executive authority. And that should not be allowed to hold.
This is a tragic moment, but that moment cannot be used to justify the overreach that we are watching play out right now in real time.
CORNISH: We have been hearing this word autocracy, fascism. We’ve been hearing this language a lot from Democrats. And I want to play for you something from Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, because he’s basically been warning the party against this kind of talk. He thinks it’s too close to the argument made during the Biden administration about democracy. And here’s how he explains it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PA): You just don’t ever, ever compare anyone to Hitler and those kinds of extreme things. We can’t compare people to these kinds of figures in history. And this is not an autocrat. This is a product of a Democratic election. He’s definitely different, but that’s what America voted for. Again, I don’t agree with many of these things, but that does not make him an autocratic.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: Your response?
ABRAMS: I think it’s important that we understand what authoritarian rule looks like. It means the expansion of executive authority beyond what is generally understood as not just norms, but what is permitted. This is a president who has faced multiple lawsuits that he’s lost because he has overreached.
It’s the installation of loyalists. And you all in your earlier segment talked about the fact that the FBI is being run by a podcaster, that the Department of Defense is being run by another podcaster, that we have watched people who know how to do their jobs be summarily dismissed and replaced by loyalists who have vowed only to hold the authority of the president and not the people as their central responsibility.
But let’s be clear. Autocracy didn’t end in 1945. Viktor Orban is an autocrat. We know that — that Putin is an autocrat. We know that Erdogan is an autocrat. Autocracy takes hold whenever any democratically elected official exceeds their power, weakens the competing powers of Congress, of the courts.
CORNISH: Yeah, I think in a way —
(CROSSTALK)
CORNISH: Let me just interrupt here for a second. In a way, what Fetterman is arguing is that maybe there’s a kind of chicken little effect also, that having talked about Trump as an existential threat for so long has had diminishing returns on the public. And now that you actually plan to go out and spend money and — and educate people, as you say about this, how do you plan to do this differently to people who have said, I got it. I’ve heard this for a while now.
ABRAMS: Because before we had the theory of what could happen, now we’re watching it play out in real time. We’ve watched Americans be kidnapped off of the streets of this country. Washington, D.C., is under military occupation. We just had the U.S. Supreme Court restore us to a moment when racial profiling is now a permissible activity by a militarized police force known as ICE that can go masked. Those are examples that in any other country would very much raise the alarm bells of any member of the U.S. Senate. But because it’s happened in America, we have this naivete that we believe we are immune to what autocracy looks like. And that’s my point. We are not as far in as deep as other nations are, but we are already there.
Scholars have pointed out there are 10 steps. We have hit all 10 steps. We just watched this administration, but also this political party, decide that it was OK to redistrict in the middle of the decade in order to explicitly seize more power. That’s authoritarian. It is not about comparing people to heinous figures of the past. It’s about acknowledging the present, that people feel real harm, are feeling very scared and are legitimately worried about whether our democracy can hold when the president of the United States, suborned by his political party, announced that he intends to eliminate access to voting rights in this country, that he intends to go after his enemies in this country.
CORNISH: Yes.
ABRAMS: That’s authoritarianism under anyone’s guise.
CORNISH: And you’ve also been talking about people not seeing the midterms as somehow something that’s going to solve all of this. And it’s going to be interesting to watch you try and make your mark on this election.
Recommended
Trump to ABC’s Jonathan Karl: “You Have A Lot Of Hate In Your Heart,” Maybe The DOJ Will Come After ABC For Hate Speech
September 16, 2025
President Donald Trump admonished ABC News White House correspondent Jonathan Karl at a press availability before boarding Marine One on Tuesday morning.
JONATHAN KARL: And what do you make Pam Bondi saying shes going to go after hate speech? Is that, I mean, a lot of people, a lot of your…
Jonathan KarlDonald Trumppam bondi
