Earlier Ed wrote about Hillary Clinton’s claim that the Russians are preparing Tulsi Gabbard for a third-party run to ensure Trump is reelected. That was certainly a highlight of Hillary’s appearance on the podcast hosted by David Plouffe, but it wasn’t the only truly paranoid thing she said.

A bit earlier in the same interview, Hillary argued that Trump’s goal was to ensure he never has to leave office. She’s wasn’t talking about a 2nd term after a successful reelection campaign. Hillary believes Trump is seeking to become a permanent American dictator.

“How concerned are you that what happened in ’16—the disinformation, the lies, some suppression—now you have an incumbent president, well-funded, who is probably more obsessed with re-election than any president we’ve ever had…Do you think there’s a chance that they could perfect this in this election cycle and what do we do about that?” Plouffe asked.

“I think they are perfecting it as we speak, David,” Hillary replied. She continued, “I’ve told all the candidates I’ve spoken with, I mean there’s so many of them but I think I’ve spoken to a majority of them. I’ve said look, you could run the best campaign, you could have the best plans, you could get the nomination and you could lose.”

Hillary then outlines four factors she said could cause this 1) voter suppression, 2) theft of material through hacking, 3) propaganda on social media, and 4) actual interference in the election.

And then Hillary suggested Trump is a puppet of Putin: “Donald Trump is Vladimir Putin’s dream,” Hillary said. “He said that the biggest catastrophe in history was the collapse of the former Soviet Union. As a former KGB guy, he is intent upon undermining democracies and trying to lay the groundwork for a resurgence of Russian greatness as he posits. And Donald Trump is delivering that to him on a daily basis,” she said.

“I don’t know why exactly. I don’t know what Putin has on him, whether it’s both personal and financial, I assume it is,” Hillary added.

Hillary’s not the first person to make this claim but then she went even further, suggesting Trump’s goal is to remain in office permanently.

“But more than that, there is this bizarre adulation Trump has for dictators and authoritarians. He dreams of being able to order people to do things and make them do it,” she said. She continued, “He has no democratic instincts, really. And I saw that when I was Secretary of State and traveled to 112 countries. One of our big problems were people who got themselves elected and then became authoritarian and then did everything they could to rig elections, everything they could to make sure that they were never forced out of power.

“That is his game plan. That is what he’s trying to achieve. And it’s terrifying to me because scholars, like professor Timothy Snyder who wrote that great little book on tyranny, they’ve told us what the game plan is. But I still think people have a hard time believing that, David. It’s like ‘Really? Oh, come on…'”

Well, she’s right that people still have a hard time believing this, possibly because it’s completely nuts. I’d even be willing to grant that Trump often seems too impressed with thugs like Kim Jong-Un and Recep Erdogan but the idea that he’s actively working to become a permanent dictator here is a left-wing conspiracy theory worthy of Alex Jones.

What this brought to mind for me was Hillary’s infamous comment about a “vast-right-wing conspiracy” to take down her husband. At the time that seemed oddly conspiratorial but listening to this podcast, you get the impression this is Hillary’s default setting. She is a deeply paranoid person. That might also explain some of her other behavior, come to think of it. What kind of person sets up a private server in their basement? Someone who is this paranoid.

We’ve really come a long way from the days when the left was up in arms over Trump saying the 2016 election was rigged. Now Hillary is the one claiming 2020 will be rigged against whoever is the Democratic candidate. I wonder how the media will react to all of this now.

The full interview isn’t available on YouTube so you’ll have to click here to listen. Plouffe’s question about Trump’s re-election starts about 12 minutes in. Hillary’s comment about Putin having kompromat on Trump comes at 16:20. Finally, her claim that Trump is seeking to become a dictator appears at 17:00.