Rachel Maddow often announces MSNBC won’t air live speeches from Donald Trump because ”There is a cost to us, as a news organization, of knowingly broadcasting untrue things.” But that never stops the Madcow speeches about the “rise of fascism in this country,” as she uncorked during Iowa caucus coverage in the 9pm hour.
MSNBC host and former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki revved up Rachel by noting a Des Moines Register/NBC poll found 50 percent said of Iowa GOP voters said they were more likely to back Trump when hearing Trump’s promise to authorize “sweeping raids, giant camps and mass deportations” to deal with the border, and 43 percent were more likely to vote Trump over his statement “The radical left thugs that live like vermin in the U.S. need to be rooted out.” They think agreeing with this is Fascism on the Rise:
RACHEL MADDOW: The big picture take away from that — and I don’t mean to be, again, too dark, as you said, on this. But, it is not — if we are worried about the rise of authoritarianism in this country, we are worried about the potential rise of fascism in this country, worried about our democracy falling to an authoritarian and potentially fascist form of government, the leader who is trying to do that is part of that equation. But people wanting that is a much bigger part of that equation.
And the American electorate is made up of two major parties. One of those parties has been flirting with extremism on the ultra-right for a very long time. They’ve brought them in in a way that they haven’t been central to Republican electoral politics ever before.
Once you have radicalized one major party so that those are the preferences of the people who adhere to your party, the leader’s interchangeable. And yes, Trumpism is sometimes what we call it, the MAGA movement is probably a better way to do it. But there isn’t an authoritarian movement inside Republican politics that isn’t being bamboozled by Trump. They are pushing Trump to get more and more extreme because the more extreme things he says, the more they adhere. And that is coming from a very large proportion of the American right that adheres to the Republican Party. That’s why this is a Republican Party problem more than it is the problem of one man…
Ari Melber babbled something about how Trump voters display “religious zeal without religion,” and Maddow doubled down: “Or you call it religion when really you want strongman government and getting rid of democracy.”