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Ex-chess champ Garry Kasparov worries over 'enfeebled Congress', says 'extremist wings' will help Donald Trump

The Russian grandmaster, a strong critic of Vladimir Putin and Trump, has expressed fear over the direction America's democracy is heading post November 3

Former chess champion Garry Kasparov, who works to defend liberal democracy and is based in the US now, has slammed Russian President Vladimir Putin and the US Congress alleging that the Russian leader has sunken his teeth into “an enfeebled Congress”. 

The 57-year-old Russian chess grandmaster, who founded a political organization called Renew Democracy Initiative in 2017, came up with a series of tweets on Sunday, November 22, which targeted the US Congress in the light of Russia’s political system. 

In one tweet, Kasparov said: “While most concerns about the US becoming like Putin's Russia focused on an authoritarian president, I'm starting to worry about an enfeebled Congress with extremist wings like Russia's: Nationalists and Communists!”

In the same thread, he said in another post: “Such extremes can push people toward a relatively reasonable-sounding authoritarian. Putin had the nationalist ranting of Zhirinovsky and the Communist Zyuganov to make him look like the only sane choice.”

In a third, Kasparov said: “As I wrote years ago about this radicalization trend, the "Spanish Civil War" model, this isolates the middle. But that presumes an eventual victory by one side. Instead, it can leave an opening for an opportunistic agnostic like Putin, who cares only for power.”

Kasparov has always been a staunch critic of leaders who have displayed authoritarian tendencies. The man was arrested twice in Russia for opposing Putin and since 2013, he has lived in NYC with his family in a self-imposed exile.

Kasparov issued warnings on Trump & GOP in 2017

In February 2017, soon after Trump became the president, Kasparov told Vox that making the maverick leader look like a loser was crucial. He feared that things would not change unless Trump’s own party started seeing him as a liability to its own fundraising and re-election chances.

The former chess world champion spoke out over Trump’s refusal to concede defeat against his Democratic opponent Joe Biden and took on the GOP for not taking a strong and decisive stand against him on the matter. 
 
In another tweet, Kasparov said: “Only 5 GOP Senators have acknowledged reality by my count. Cruz is tweeting pictures about Thanksgiving when he and his colleagues are the real turkeys. Constitutionalists? Rule of law? Or Trump? They have chosen and it won't be forgotten.”

He also asked in another tweet whether Trump’s decision to hold a rally on January 21 to say that he is the real president is not treason. He said apart from violence it could cause, it’s an attack on the American Union itself. 

“Right now it's high crimes and misdemeanors. But if Trump holds a rally on January 21, saying he's the real president, is that not treason? Aside from the violence it would likely lead to, it's an attack on the union itself,” his post read. 

Kasparov also said: “Extremism isn’t the only danger, dysfunction and stagnation are too. If Congress is increasingly seen as abdicating its powers as the first branch, people will continue to support the expansion of executive power when their party has power,” Kasparov warned.

“I wrote about the need for a ‘popular front’ against Trump in Jan. The emphasis is usually on one extremist side winning the winner-take-all prize. But discrediting the parliament and regular politics is a more subtle danger.”

Linking Putin with the American democratic process, Kasparov said the former cares more about the “person who wins than their politics”. “...he supports extremists on all sides in his interference campaigns. Not just for chaos, but to delegitimize the system and make an autocrat more likely to rise,” he added. 

Kasparov then said that Trump’s attack on the legitimacy of the November 3 presidential election will not end on January 20, the Inauguration Day. He said it’s an attack on the legitimacy of Biden as the president and predicted the incumbent president will not stop claiming that he was cheated and his GOP aides would contribute towards destabilizing the country with their silence.