On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) said if President Donald Trump was not held accountable for his continued abuse of powers, the country could become a “totalitarian state.”

Hirono said, “I am not holding my breath that four senators will come forward to say we should have witnesses, which is a definition of a fair trial. What is going to end up is we will have procedures. We will have rules. They would not be what we would like, but there you have it. That’s why this is yet another example of how the Republicans simply cannot address directly what the president did. Because you know, if so, then they are really saying the president did it, so what. It is what I call the ‘so what’ defense.”

She added, “This is what Chuck Schumer is talking about. If we do not hold the president accountable for shaking down the president of another country and doing what he did, then we know for a fact that this president is going to continue to abuse his powers. And he will thumb his nose at anything that Congress does in terms of subpoenas. So you know what? If this is the kinds of democracy we are living in, that is not a democracy. That is a totalitarian state. And I think Trump really likes that. He sees himself as a dictator. He likes that. He thinks he can do anything he wants as president in this country, including shooting somebody on Fifth Avenue and not being held accountable for it.”

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