Rachel Maddow Says the ‘Interesting Question' About Trump Is ‘What the Country Lets Him Get Away With'

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18 hours ago

Rachel Maddow belittled Donald Trump on Monday night whilechatting with her MSNBC colleague Lawrence O'Donnell, declaring that Trump's latest 'dictator' actions have made him 'very boring.' Not that she argued the current situation isn't serious, only that Trump is acting like, as she joked, a blonde copy of the extremely corrupt former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
But Maddow also clarified that the 'really interesting question' about all of this is 'what the country lets him get away with.
The comment came up at the start of 'The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell,' as the duo discussed how Trump's current actions — calling in the national guard over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom to quell lawful protests — are the exact opposite of what he said he could legally do in 2020 during the George Floyd protests. At that time, Trump said it would be unlawful for him to do so without a request of a state governor.
'I mean the difference,' Maddow said, is that 'he's decided that he's throwing it all out. You know, 'dictator on day from day one,' and you know, going to terminate parts of the Constitution. And he's decided that he doesn't matter what Congress does, and it doesn't matter what the courts do, that he's just the strong man he's going to be.'
'He's decided to throw out all the rules,' Maddow continued. 'The thing that that has done, as far as I'm concerned, is make him very boring, because it's like it's all on the table. We know exactly what he's doing. We know exactly what his intentions are. He's blonde Berlusconi. This is, I mean, he's just trying to do the same thing all the other strongmen and would be dictators do all over the country. I think the really interesting question is, what the country lets him get away with, and we're seeing a really interesting test of that right now, all over the country, especially this week.'
Later in the discussion, Maddow argued that the issue isn't that Trump has changed his mind over what he can and cannot legally do, it's that 'we can probably intuit that what he's being told is, 'yeah, it's illegal, therefore, go do it.' I think that the more laws he breaks, the more blatantly unconstitutional things he both proposes and tries, I think the more they think power accrues to him, because he's less constrained by things that don't actually stop him.'
'And so ultimately, I mean, the courts are pushing him back. Congress, to a certain extent, is pushing him back a little bit, although I think a little bit more than they're giving credit for, but mostly it's people pushing him back. He's deeply, deeply, deeply unpopular and underwater on every issue, and he is absolutely panicked by the protests against him, to the point where he's already playing the biggest cards that he's gotten. He's not even six months into this term. I just think, I think we're getting the test really early, and I think that he's failing.'
Maddow later noted that Trump's rhetoric and response to the protests is vastly out of proportion with the scope of them, but 'even if these protests were 100 times the size that they are, there still wouldn't be an operational reason to bring in active duty troops or federalized National Guard. I mean, it's just, it's not, it's not that sort of thing. This is obviously not operationally necessitated, right, in terms of the security of the city. He's doing this because he's panicking and thinks that he looks weak, and therefore he has to do something that seems strong.'
'And so we will have tanks destroying the streets of Washington this Saturday, and we will have National Guardsmen and active duty US Marines standing around Los Angeles, wondering what their what this has to do with their military careers. And it's all because he has no freaking idea how to deal with this politically. And he's absolutely panicking about the, I think, trenchant and joyful and sustainable opposition against him.' Maddow added.
Watch the whole conversation below:
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