Steve Schmidt went on a tear against President Donald Trump this afternoon over the possibility of his administration revoking the security clearances of political critics.

He told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, “This is a very dangerous day for American democracy. This is the move of an autocrat, not an American president.”

Sarah Sanders said today Trump is considering revoking the clearances of former CIA director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA/NSA chief Michael Hayden, and others, following a meeting between Trump and Senator Rand Paul––who had publicly proposed this idea.

Schmidt called it Trump’s “continuing abuse of power” and “his authoritarian instinct at full use here.”

Wallace said that even during the Bush era, “No one was ever stripped of their security clearances of being harsh critics of the Iraq war. This has never happened before.”

She brought up how people who have been more skeptical on the Russian questions are starting to rethink things, and Schmidt said, “When you diagram the president’s rantings right there, what jumps out, of course, is his allegation of nefarious conspiracy.”

“The allegation of conspiracy which fuses together with his scapegoating of minority populations and, of course, his victimization of his supporters, that they are all being victimized together by this hidden conspiracy that works for the purposes of the elites against the victim class, that is supported by minority populations, the invading hoards of Guatemala children, for example,” Schmidt said. “This is all part of his schtick that he repeats over and over again from his mass rallies where his lies constantly to that TV interview. And no doubt tonight on Fox News there will be all manner of allegations of conspiracy that will contextualize the ‘they got to him’ and make it make sense to 40% of the country for whom Trump has stripped away any ability that they have to see objective truth and fact. And, of course, that’s alarming in a democracy.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.

[image via screengrab]

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