CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett warned that the United States is “85 percent” close to a civil war.
Garrett made this prediction during an interview with The Daily Beast, which was published on Monday, ahead of the Sept. 30 release of his and CBS News election law contributor David Becker’s book, The Big Truth: Upholding Democracy in the Age of “The Big Lie”.
“We wanted to show people that what we’re talking about is just incremental steps from where we already are,” Garrett said regarding the possibility of another American civil war. “I don’t think anyone reading that first chapter can honestly say, ‘Oh, that could never happen.’ They have to say, ‘Holy crap, we’re 85 percent there.’”
On Sunday’s Face the Nation, host Margaret Brennan noted that Garrett uses the term “civil war” in the book’s first page. Garrett echoed the sentiment he shared with The Daily Beast.
When asked by Brennan “how dangerous is the moment we are in” given the current state of American democracy, Garrett did not mince words.
It feels more dangerous, Margaret, than any I’ve encountered in covering politics at the national level since 1990. Stating what clearly happened in 2020, it wasn’t a fraudulent election. No crime was committed. That doesn’t mean you have to be happy with the result, but one of the burdens of democracy is when you’re unhappy with the result, your obligation is to win the next election, not slander baselessly the election loss.
And we have a component of American politics now that wants to slander an election that was fairly lost because they’re unhappy. And that unhappiness does not entitle you to drag down American democracy because if, Margaret, we enter a phase in American life where either political party refuses to accept fair and verified elections simply because it lost, then we will dismantle democracy bit by bit before our very eyes.
Watch above via CBS.
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