Bill Clinton warns ‘The View’ why Americans ‘should be worried’ politically

Former President Bill Clinton sounded a political alarm during his latest appearance on The View.

The 78-year-old Democrat and author James Patterson appeared Thursday morning on the talk show to promote their new novel The First Gentleman, though the conversation naturally turned to real-world politics amid controversial policies and patterns of conduct under President Donald Trump’s Republican administration.

“We need to talk about the future,” panelist Sunny Hostin told Clinton, before observing that she feels Trump is “working to dismantle, in my view, our foundational institutions” through his conflicts with American universities, deportations, and his tumultuous dealings with judges in the legal system. “Are you confident that the courts will hold, and what concerns you most about what he’s doing now?”

“That the courts won’t hold until we have our midterm elections,” Clinton replied, going on to reference the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an El Salvador man whose “deportation violated a U.S. immigration judge’s order in 2019 that shielded Abrego Garcia from expulsion to his native country,” per the Associated Press.

“The guy is still there in jail, so I’m worried about that, and you should be worried about that. Whatever your politics [are],” Clinton said. “Because, although I have a sneaking suspicion, if our party wins the White House in the next election, there will be a hallelujah moment and the Supreme Court will rediscover the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and limits.”

Clinton said he’ll “be happy if that happens because all of us should operate under guard rails,” and that “the whole purpose of the Constitution was to repeal royal governance, unaccountable governance, that no Democrat or Republican can be without accountability.”

Later in the discussion, Joy Behar asked Patterson if the pair wrote The First Gentleman hoping that “life would imitate art,” seeing as the book revolves around a female president and her spouse, mirroring a scenario that would’ve resulted for Clinton if his wife and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton would’ve won the presidency in her race against Trump.

“I wanted the job,” he told the cohosts. “It’s the only political job I ever wanted that I didn’t get.”

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Whoopi Goldberg then jumped in to offer a bit of hope: “There’s still time, nothing is off the table, that’s what I say.”

The View airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET/10 a.m. PT on ABC.