Trump's niece spills details about ex-president's dictator talk: 'how he's always behaved'

Donald Trump's "vermin" remark and other comments that echo those of past dictators are no accident, and they are not new territory for the former president, his own niece said on Saturday.

Mary Trump, herself a psychologist who has frequently criticized the actions of her uncle, appeared on CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta, where she was asked about "the Don's" statement that he would only be "a dictator" on "day one" of his presidency.

"We need to take Donald at his word to a certain point," Mary Trump said. "We can ignore the second half of that. Dictators don't stop being dictators. And he has every intention of destroying American democracy, and we need to be clear why. It's entirely for his own benefit. Nothing about this is ideological."

She added that, in Trump's mind, "every day from then on will be day one."

"He has no intention of stopping. He knows why he needs to get back into the White House. Those reasons won't disappear on a day two or day 100. So, we have to take this threat incredibly seriously."

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Asked about Trump's "vermin" comment, Mary Trump had this to say:

"It's all a piece with how he's always behaved. The difference now, of course, is that he -- his target audience is just getting bigger and bigger. And the amount of power he has is increasing."

She added that her uncle "uses that kind of rhetoric, because he knows it plays with his base, but he also uses it because he doesn't care about other human beings."

"And we cannot afford to continue to place people like that in power, because the stakes are just too high, and the consequences would just be too devastating."

In addition to his speech pattern, another thing has stayed the same with Trump over the years, according to his niece: going after the media.

"Donald's been promising to do that for years, if not decades," she said. "Any time anybody in the media slightly criticizes him or isn't willing to toe his line, he's threatened them. The difference is that it would come with power to enact those threats."

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