Presidential Historian Jon Meacham: Trump’s Possible 2024 Campaign is a ‘Constitutional Crisis’

Presidential historian and frequent CNN guest Jon Meacham said he believed the possibility of former President Donald Trump seeking re-election in 2024 represented an “unfolding” constitutional crisis.

“In 2024, whatever happens, he will claim he won,” CNN’s Fareed Zakaria told Meacham in a Sunday interview. “Doesn’t that present us with a constitutional crisis?”

“I think it’s an unfolding one,” Meacham replied, before comparing the Jan. 6 unrest in Washington, D.C. to the Civil War. “I think we came as close to losing the Constitution … that day as we have since Fort Sumter.”

Alluding to the Greek roots of the word “crisis” and its application to politics in the United States, he added, “It’s the moment in a disease where the patient lives or dies, and I think we’re certainly there.”

Meacham, a Vanderbilt University professor who previously wrote speeches for Biden and helped craft his inaugural address, has been an acerbic, long-time critic of the former president. He advised in December that he believed Trump could be guilty of treason, and in earlier years, lavished praise on former President Barack Obama for his ability to “think in more complex terms,” citing the 44th president’s background as a professor.

Watch above via CNN.