For reasons I’ll never understand, if one wants to be part of the cool crowd on the liberal side, it is your duty to hate Morning Joe. Liberals blame Morning Joe, in part, for Trump’s rise, as if Joe and Mika should have been clairvoyant and known they were playing with matches back when no one thought Trump had a chance.
Whatever one thinks of the show, the panel will, on occasion, jump on an American moment and refuses to let it pass without utilizing the words needed to explain what happened over the weekend, “fascism,” “guns,” “violence,” and “power.” To the extent that the public had far better things to do than this weekend (Two great football games would take up a lot of time), Trump had a rally Saturday night and it wasn’t just “we won by a landslide” stuff.
It was the new Trump. Trump is afraid, cornered, the secrecy is gone – indeed, the Committee might need to hire more staff, they are now overwhelmed by an “avalanche” of evidence. Trump knows what is in that evidence and this weekend, his mind was on prosecutions. It is no accident that Trump said that if prosecutors do anything “illegal” in Atlanta, New York, and Washington, he is calling for the largest demonstrations ever. We know what happened at his last demonstration. The next step up doesn’t involve more people, it involves more “demonstration,” guns – and the Morning Joe panel jumped on the importance.
Then last night Trump put out a statement in which he used Trump logic – complete lies – to “prove” that Mike Pence had the lawful authority to overturn the election had he just done so.
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Yes, Trump indeed did raise the stakes of the investigation, possible prosecutions, possible elections, possible pardons, all of it. Scarborough himself summed up the panel’s conclusions: (Video below)
“You have seen the rise of authoritarianism, and it is certainly what we all understand Donald Trump has been wanting to do for quite some time.”
“If you can’t win an election, steal an election, overturn an election — that’s what he was saying, talking about Mike Pence. Yeah, he actually said some things — we haven’t been playing his rallies of late, but he actually said some things that were so inflammatory that you had Republicans coming out and actually criticizing him and saying, ‘Hey, no, no, let’s take a step back, we didn’t want to overturn the election, we were just talking about having some of the votes recounted.'”
It is hard to overstate that, with respect to the statement issued Sunday night, Trump’s assertion that the Democrats’ proposed new law proves Pence had the power to overturn the election, no one at this site has any idea what he’s referencing.
Scarborough moved on:
“But, again, Donald Trump is now speaking in shorthand, now saying what he really means. He wanted a free and fair election overturned. Why? Because he didn’t win, and, again, his words have consequences.
This new sort of almost fascist –– I don’t know, do you say almost fascist after Jan. 6 or do you say fascist? His fascist instinct to use violence to overturn government institutions, we’re actually seeing it at Trump events where you have people asking, when do we start using guns? You are seeing it at forums. This past weekend, I believe it was, you had a Michigan Senate candidate telling people to bring guns to polling places. If they didn’t win, they needed to be locked and loaded. Basically saying, if we can’t win at the ballot box we are going to win by killing people.”
Why are Americans on one side in one movement suddenly willing to kill people? I find the answer to be simple. If the country was all white and elections were being decided, either way, there’d be none of this talk, even if Trump tried.
But the country is most certainly not all white and most people of color, LGBTQ friends, new citizens, and the white educated elite, most often vote Democratic. In the MAGA mind, even if the Democrats end up with more votes, they are the wrong votes. They are not American votes. Thus, elections are “stolen” from real Americans, which inevitably leads to the need for violence to keep what they see as “their” country. It is already a war.
That is it. That is the explanation. How did Trump know he won Georgia? Because Stacey Abrams stole it from him unfairly. She managed to get tens of thousands of “illegal” votes (they were not illegal, just the wrong type of people) and thus it is “stolen” because he won, in a landslide… with white people.
Getting back to Scarborough, one of the essential elements of fascism is that there is always a group to blame. The powerful aggrieved people are willing to take up arms because it’s an identifiable “different” group’s fault. They are causing all “this.” To Trump’s fascist movement, the liberals are to blame, those POC, and all the categories that fit into “liberals,” including the white “race traitors.”
Trump’s appeal has always been that it’s okay to say; “We hate these people.” It has always been to say; “They don’t count.” On January 6th it was okay to say “We need to fight or we’ll lose our country.” This last weekend, Trump said that if he’s arrested “illegally” (like a “rigged election”), it is okay to take demonstrations to the next level, the biggest of all. And he essentially called for war if he’s stopped.
This weekend was different because it’s different Trump. It is exposed Trump. And if they come for him, he’s telling his movement to come for him. Fascism.
@JasonMiciak believes a day without learning is a day not lived. He is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is a Canadian-born dual citizen who spent his teen and college years in the Pacific Northwest and has since lived in seven states. He now enjoys life as a single dad of a young girl, writing from the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He loves crafting his flower pots, cooking, and currently studies philosophy of science, religion, and non-math principles behind quantum mechanics and cosmology. Please feel free to contact with any concerns.
