'People need to wake up': Governor decries looming 'death of the Constitutional republic'

Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) delivered a state-of-the-state address that was heralded by viewers as an elected Democrat standing up to President Donald Trump amid the inaction of those in Congress. Speaking to CNN's Jake Tapper on Tuesday, Pritzker implored Amerians to "wake up."

Among the comments Pritzker made in his speech was that it took a short amount of time for Nazis to unmake the German constitutional government. Tapper called it an "evocative" comparison and asked if he thinks it might be too controversial.

"We're talking about the death of a constitutional republic," said Pritzker. "That's what happened in Germany in 1933, 1934. And we're seeing today that you've got an administration in Washington that's ignoring court orders. Literally ignoring when a judge says, you can't do this. They're going ahead and doing it anyway. The question is, where does that stop?"

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He noted that courts can't enforce their own orders.

“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,” Vice President J.D. Vance wrote.

“If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

It's not the first time he's made such comments.

In a 2021podcast, Vance said, “I think that what Trump should, like, if I was giving him one piece of advice, [is] fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people. And when the courts — because you will get taken to court — and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”

The president is supposed to obey the courts, Pritzker said.

But he isn't.

"So, this is just one piece of a very long story that's developed over the last six weeks of the ignorance of constitutional norms and indeed, disobeying the Constitution, announcing that we're going to do away with birthright citizenship that's been established. well, it's in the Constitution, for goodness sake," Pritzker continued. "So I really think people need to wake up to what's happening in Washington."

Pritzker said he is well aware of what led to the Holocaust. While he's not saying that's what the U.S. will become, "I know what happened in the early '30s with the death of the German democracy, and that could happen in the United States."

See the clip below or at the link here.

- YouTubeyoutu.be