Billionaire Democratic donor George Soros has shared his belief that Donald Trump is a temporary figure in American politics, claiming though that he remains "dangerous" as he is determined to do everything he can to stay in the White House.
"Even in the United States, a confidence trickster like Trump can be elected president and undermine democracy from within", Soros told Italy's La Repubblica in an interview on his 90th birthday, going on to speculate about the mechanisms inherent in American political life that he believes will play their part:
"But in the US you have a great tradition of checks and balances and established rules. And above all you have the Constitution. So I am confident that Trump will turn out to be a transitory phenomenon, hopefully ending in November", the philanthropist to leftist causes noted.
Soros went on to remark that Trump "remains very dangerous" because "he's fighting for his life and he will do anything to stay in power".
He claimed that Trump is fighting for re-election for fear of prosecution over his constitutional violations in the event of losing his bid.
This is not the first time the Hungarian-born financier and investor has taken aim at the Republican president.
Most recently, he delivered a verbal broadside to US President Donald Trump who, according to him, "would like to be a dictator amid the sweeping COVID pandemic. "But he cannot be one because there is a Constitution in the United States that people still respect, and it will prevent him from doing certain things — that doesn't mean he will not try because he is literally fighting for his political survival", he went on, dwelling on the democratic system of checks and balances in the US.
At the same time, Soros, whose net worth is well over $8 billion, according to Forbes, said he put his faith in Trump "to destroy himself", and so far, the US president has exceeded his "wildest expectations".
Trump, for his part, has also targeted the billionaire with utmost zeal: for instance, he earlier accused "Soros and others" of paying for signs carried by protesters at rallies against his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who was last year cleared of all sexual assault allegations, brought against him by his accusers and supported by the left-wing public.
During a tumultuous American presidential race, further complicated by the coronavirus pandemic, the charity network owned by Soros, Open Society Foundations is reported to have been investing heavily in Democrats' campaigns. Soros himself has donated more than $32 million of his personal fortune to the NGO to help the cause, according to Fox News. As per filings from 2019, the Open Society Policy Centre (OSPC), the lobbying arm of Open Society Foundations, has spent more on federal lobbying during Donald Trump's time in office than it did under two of his predecessors.