Guess the Chris Hayes contingent missed the memo from President Obama about giving Trump a chance . . . The topic on Hayes’ MSNBC show last night was Trump’s thank-you tour of states that had supported him. Hayes kicked things off by making a thinly-veiled Hitler allusion, saying the Trump rallies feel “not that far from rallies for the ‘leader,’ which don’t have a great history in politics across the world.”
Slate columnist Michelle Goldberg was not so coy, coming right out and claiming that Trump is “going to turn our country into a racist police state.” Not to be outdone, Fordham professor Christina Greer said that the Trump rallies “have a feeling of a Klan rally, they have a feel of a white-supremacist rally.”
There was also some paranoia on display. Goldberg claimed to detect a “menacing and threatening” tone in Trump’s “menacing asides” at the rallies to people who didn’t vote for him. So what was so “menacing and threatening?” Why, Trump said that people who opposed him “are on our side, they just don’t know it yet” and “you’re going to like what we have in store.” Scary stuff!
CHRIS HAYES: I have a sort of instinctual aversion to the mode of the Trump rally, particularly after he won, because it feels like, it feels not that far from rallies for [air quotes] “the leader,” which don’t have a great history, I think, in politics across the world.. . .MICHELLE GOLDBERG: The whole posture is kind of one of both rallying the people who voted for him, and also kind of menacing and threatening the majority who didn’t, right, with these sort of menacing asides: they’re on our side, they just don’t know it yet. You’re going to like what we have in store. It’s—I don’t think I’m reading too much into it. [Ed.: actually, you are.]HAYES: That’s my question, right? In the words of Barack Obama, like, are you saying that’s menacing because of the words, or are you saying it because it’s coming from the mouth of Donald Trump?GOLDBERG: Because it’s coming from the mouth of Donald Trump, who’s going to turn our country into a racist police state.CHRISTINA GREER: Well, I think that’s what he ran on, and here we are. Trump rallies have a feeling of a Klan rally, they have a feel of a white-supremacist rally.
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