Canadian author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell thinks that if Donald Trump is elected, he won’t be in office very long.
In an interview with The National, the Outliers author predicted that the GOP presidential candidate “will be in jail within a year” because of the various legal issues he faces.
“He’s got so many legal problems, I suspect he will spend the next few years huddled with his lawyers,” Gladwell said, referencing the candidate’s Trump University fraud case, “Russian ties” and questionable charity donations.
When asked why voters are talking about Hillary Clinton’s emails in the last days before the election instead of those legal problems, Gladwell explained: “Welcome to the great mystery of the American election 2016.”
On Clinton, Gladwell said that people are opposed to her as a candidate simply because she is a woman. “People had a preexisting mental notion of what a female candidate would look like, and she doesn’t look like it.” He added that it is “difficult for society to accept an openly ambitious woman,” which worked against her during her campaign (and during her career at large).
“To me, the most disturbing lesson about this election is that the United States is a good deal less open to women in positions of power than it would like to pretend that it is,” he concluded.
“One guy is the child of privilege who grew up in a multimillion-dollar household, and has every advantage handed to him on a silver platter. The other candidate is a woman who came from the most ordinary of circumstances,” explained Gladwell. “Who is the elite in this battle?”
If Clinton does win, Gladwell said, “the forecast for the next four years is just a stalemate,” because he predicts Republicans will investigate her on day one and not give up until she leaves office.
Watch the interview below.
