Historian Claims United States ‘Could Be a Dictatorship’ By Next Year If Trump ‘Carries Through’ on Threat to ‘Suspend Constitution’

NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss claimed on Thursday that the United States could be a “dictatorship” by next year and that’s part of the message President Joe Biden should be delivering at his State of the Union address.

Joining MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Beschloss compared Biden’s Thursday address to that of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He referred to the “dictatorship” worries as the “elephant in the room.”

“Well, this is a real historical moment. We could be a dictatorship next year if Donald Trump is elected and carries through on his threats, and carries through on his threats to suspend the Constitution. That’s what’s at stake,” he said. “So Joe Biden could finesse it and talk about other things or he could confront the elephant in the room and say this is a year when we Americans have to choose whether we’re going to live as a democracy, as a republic, or as an authoritarian system.”

The analyst has been highly critical of Trump in the past, comparing him to the president of the Confederacy and accusing him of trying to create a “pre-Civil War” situation to avoid jail.

Beschloss argued on Thursday that Biden could have a moment similar to FDR.

“That’s what FDR was doing in 1941. Nazis, fascists, imperial Japanese were rampaging around the world and he said you Americans have to choose and also for you Americans that think that we need to be fascist at home to compete with other fascist governments, which a lot of people were saying, he said we need these four freedoms: freedom from want or fear, freedom of speech and religion,” he said.

Watch above via MSNBC.