A former White House national security advisor was taken aback by the Trump administration's most recent cabinet meeting.
Jake Sullivan, who served as former President Joe Biden's national security advisor, discussed the meeting on a recent episode of The Bulwark's podcast on YouTube. He described the meeting as one taken from a "Kim Jong-Un documentary," referring to the dictatorial leader of North Korea.
"Honestly, I've never seen anything like it," Sullivan said. "And there is a kind of ludicrous, humorous quality to it, but it's also a little bit scary because it reflects something deeper and dangerous about the president's autocratic tendencies and the fact that these people around him are just so slavish that I don't think they would stand up to him on anything at any point."
"And without those kinds of guard rails, I think it's uh it's bleak what we may be facing here in the coming days and months," he added.
Sullivan said the tactics Trump is using to fulfill his autocratic tendencies reminded him of other strongman leaders across the globe.
"This looks a lot like Erdogan in Turkey. It looks a lot like Orban in Hungary," Sullivan said. "But with one big twist, which is in both of those cases, it took a long time for them to play out their strategy. We've been at this now for seven months. And you just look at the breakneck speed with which Trump is moving to try to break down the various guardrails of our democracy."
"It's extremely concerning," he added.
Watch the entire episode below or by clicking here.