Former Gov. of Alaska and vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin has warned a second American Civil War seemed possible due to the federal investigations into Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
Palin, 59, even seemed to call for a civil uprising on the August 24, 2023 edition of Newsmax.
Palin was speaking to Eric Bolling in the hours after Trump’s arrest in Fulton County, Georgia.
“When you see the former president being fingerprinted, having to show up, turn himself in, you see the mugshots of the other seven or eight who’ve turned themselves in already, do you have concern for the country as I do?” Bolling asked.
Palin’s response was startling. “Absolutely,” she replied. “I mean I think those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tiered system of justice and I want to ask them, ‘What the heck? Do you want us to be in Civil War?’ because that’s what’s going to happen. We’re not going to keep putting up with this.”
She added that she “liked” Bolling’s suggestion that “we need to get angry,” and said Americans “need to rise up and take our country back.”
The Prospect Of Civil War
During his interview with Tucker Carlson on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, former president Trump skirted around the prospect of a civil war in 2024. Carlson’s first probe prompted Trump to talk about the events leading up to the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021.
“There was love and that there was love and unity. I have never seen such spirit and such passion and such love,” Trump said. “And I’ve also never seen simultaneously, and from the same people, such hatred of what they’ve done to our country.”
Carlson concluded by asking whether an open conflict was possible. “I don’t know,” replied Trump. “There’s a level of passion that I’ve never seen. There’s a level of hatred that I’ve never seen. That’s probably a bad combination.”
How Civil Wars Start
Barbara F. Walter, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego, wrote “How Civil Wars Start,” where she laid out how internal conflict started across the world and the similarities which could impact the U.S.
“We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe,” she wrote in her January 2022 book. “No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war,” she wrote. However, “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America — the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or the Ivory Coast or Venezuela — you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely. And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.”
Whether the U.S. descends into civil war remains a mystery. A terrifying prospect, nevertheless, and many will hope that Palin’s prophecy is a wild exaggeration rather than an accurate prediction.
Shay Bottomley is a British journalist based in Canada. He has written for the Western Standard, Maidenhead Advertiser, Slough Express, Windsor Express, Berkshire Live and Southend Echo, and has covered notable events including the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
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