Assange: Trump offers opportunity for change, Killary election would have consolidated power for ruling class

Sputnik

 

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the Trump administration will offer "opportunities for change" in the United States and condemned the president-elect's erstwhile opponent Hillary Clinton in an interview with Italian newspaper La Republicca.

"Donald Trump is not a DC insider, he is part of the wealthy ruling elite of the United States, and he is gathering around him a spectrum of other rich people and several idiosyncratic personalities," Assange said during the wide-ranging interview.

So far, Trump's team is not a power structure itself, but is "displacing and destabilizing the pre-existing central power network within DC."

"It is a new patronage structure which will evolve rapidly, but at the moment its looseness means there are opportunities for change in the United States: change for the worse and change for the better," he said.

However, Assange said he felt "mixed" about the political situation in the US. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and the network around her are responsible for the imprisonment and torture in solitary confinement of Chelsea Manning, who is alleged to have provided WikiLeaks with material, he said, and are also responsible for the war in Libya and the ripple effect of that catastrophe on conflicts in Syria, Mali and beyond.

"Hillary Clinton's election would have been a consolidation of power in the existing ruling class of the United States," he explained.

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