Trump’s “Vermin” Comment Wasn’t a Slip of the Tongue - Rachel Maddow

Hello, welcome back, that's the best fan on television. I wish you could be here, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. My guest tonight is an author, an Emmy-winning journalist who hosts the Rachel Matto Show. Please welcome Rachel Mat. Thank you so much. See you again, it's a pleasure to see you too, it's been too long. I always enjoy talking to you, as I have said many times before. You're the preeminent person in the media who can come in and expose an issue or a news story like Parts on the Grass and just put it back together so that everyone understands not only what happened but what the source of that moment is and right now you can look, we talked about the monologue tonight that there are clear signs that Donald Trump and his people are at least fascist curious, you know, yeah, yeah, there's just a leather boot smell there and you have this new book that really I'm enjoying the so-called prequel to an American fight against fascism, well, well, it was time for me to go.

To say that I didn't mean for it to be this good time. I feel like we've been in this moment where there's a rising anti-democratic movement in our politics and it can be very disconcerting and very worrying to me. Actually, it helps to know. that Americans before us faced something just as bad or worse and did very well, that's the hopeful nature of this book that I want to get into in a moment, but first I want to ask you about what's been happening recently with veterans . In a Veterans Day speech, Trump called the left

vermin

and fascists and you know a thing or two about fascism in this book, why do you think he's leaning toward these comparisons?

Yes, I think it's important that it was clearly not an improvisation. It

wasn

't something that he riffed on, it seemed to have been on his teleprompter, a hundred minutes passed after the speech, and after the speech, he posted it with the same language in truth, whatever his topic was online, um, and This means that this is not a

slip

, this is something that he is doing deliberately and if you know anything about your fascist dictators, you know that they call the people who want to eliminate Vermin, right, you know, you know that dehumanizing language is the Es like cartoon language of fascism, so I think he's doing it deliberately and Trump did it at the same time we've had these official leak type leaks from his campaign that he wants to build camps for millions of people, um, that he wants camps. professionals, even if it looks professional.

I like the element without Crocs, it gets overlooked a lot, but camps for millions of people and Americans. He also wants to invoke something called the Insurrection Act that will allow him to use American military force. against American civilians at home and says he's going to invoke that on the first day, which would give him from that day forward the ability to use the military against us at home, so he floats all those things at once and calls to their Vermin opponents. deliberately inviting criticism that he is behaving in a Hitler or fascist style, well, he must think that is a good thing for him and his campaign, and my question to you comes from what you have learned about studying the fascist movements and fascist movements in the United States.

Given that fascism is essentially a sexy, lazy political tool, why do you think so many right-wing people in America are interested right now? Well, I think he's inviting us, we have to call him a fascist and he's doing these things so I just play along, is what you're saying, well, me too, I mean, you can't ignore it, can you, you have no choice. option, he is pulling our chain, he wants us to talk about him in these terms, but It is also important that you have pointed out that in that speech he also called his critics fascists.

He wants fascist to just become a random political epithet just an insult that everyone uses that doesn't mean anything the same way he took fake news but then decided all news is fake news and now fake news is just this term that doesn't mean anything well because there can be no authority other than authoritarian and therefore no one can label it with anything, including something as precise as fascist, for anything to have meaning it has to be undermined, that's what it talks about George Orwell, it can't have meant anything other than what the state says, the meaning is exactly right, so he's stripping those words of their meaning so we can't criticize him by calling him a fascist. because he says that everything is fascist and there is also what happens in the modern republican party, which is that every accusation is a confession no puppet no puppet you are a puppet yes yes I mean, this is how he works, but this is that he is part It's not just about him, he's trying to build an anti-democratic movement in this country where people want a strong man who will maintain power by force instead of us using elections and it's attractive because you know.

It's simple, yes, just do what the strong man says, only I can fix it, yes, we have to discourage our fellow Americans from doing it as an idea without paying any attention to it, today, today, in the Senate there was a real threat of violence in the Senate. today, um, how does that make you feel about the state of our democracy? I feel like this is one of those things that's obviously hilarious because it's so stupid, yeah, um, like that guy just seems like he's trying to take the ring off, sure, sure, I like it. he wouldn't exactly want to hurt the other guy, you wouldn't want to take the ring off.

I mean, what is he talking about? It's so stupid and hilarious and also super scary and bad, and that's what our lives are like now, that's the diagram you see where we live. in the middle of something super stupid and really bad, because I want to say that the bad thing is that one of the things that one expects in a democracy in danger is that violence begins to invade the political space, people who do normal political things are going to an audience. being a pole worker certifying the result of an election those people are intimidated or threatened with violence or actually subjected to violence when that starts happening means that normal people get out of politics and it becomes a place for fighters and for people taking power by force, that's one of the big warning signs and for these guys to be playing with that literally inside the Senate is so stupid and also so bad that it almost made Bernie put down the gavel, you know, yeah, bring that little Vermont revenge on these two guys.

His friends Ben and Jerry say, okay, we need to take a quick break, but don't go, we'll be right back with more Rachel for everyone.