Rachel Maddow told MSNBC viewers Monday night that she believes the nationwide pushback against President Trump and his administration’s immigration raids has revealed “the most important story of our time.”
“This is an attempted authoritarian overthrow of the United States Constitution and the U.S. government, the attempted imposition of a dictatorial regime. That is clear,” the “Rachel Maddow Show” host said, before informing viewers that the question is not what Trump will try to do but rather, “What is this country going to allow him to do?” Maddow argued that Americans will find the answer to that question not in the White House, but in city streets, Congress and federal courts.
“The strength of the movement against [Trump] is what will determine our fate as a country,” the MSNBC anchor said. Turning her attention to the recent, citywide protests in Los Angeles against Trump, ICE and the administration’s aggressive immigrant raids, Maddow observed, “What we are seeing over and over again is that protesting against him works — that he wants to seem strong, but he is not that strong.”
You can watch the full “Rachel Maddow Show” segment in the video below.
In reaction to the protests in Los Angeles, Trump overrode the wishes of California Governor Gavin Newsom and deployed the National Guard to California. Trump’s decision to immediately resort to a military response has created what Maddow called a “portrait of weakness.”
“That is what you get when you have a supposed leader, a supposed strongman even, who can’t figure out how to get the support of his people,” the MSNBC host explained. “This is a president who has no other ideas and no skills to get him out of this political pickle that he is in.” Pointing to growing protests throughout the country in cities like Los Angeles, Atlanta and Minneapolis, Maddow said the Trump administration has resorted to “embarrassing, banana republic shambolic shows of disorganized force.”
The news anchor added that there is hope to be found in the passionate responses that Trump’s actions have elicited, first from American citizens and second from their Democratic representatives. “Protest works. One of the ways that it works is that it puts steel in the spine of the political opposition in this country,” Maddow told her MSNBC viewers. “For elected Democrats, it clarifies things for them. It shows them that the more they themselves push back as elected officials, the more support they will have from their own constituents.”
“It’s a sort of virtuous circle,” she concluded. “Right amid this primal surge of protest, this moral revulsion and rejection of what Trump is doing.”
You can watch the full “Rachel Maddow Show” segment in the video above.
