The Tuesday edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe was equal parts outrageous and unintentionally hilarious as political analyst Anand Giridharadas mused that Trump Administration immigration enforcement operations are akin to “Gestapo raids” in “East Germany.”
Co-host Jonathan Lemire wasn’t much better as he mourned that no great protest movement has showed up to oppose such enforcement efforts, “More and more people who do not have criminal records are indeed rounded up. Do you think that's the flashpoint for some sort of real pushback, public outcry, the sort of protest movement to this, at least to this point, we haven't seen in this second Trump term?”
Giridharadas began with a different sort of answer:
Here's what I think the real tipping point is, and will be: the thing that I would say Donald Trump deserves most praise for is that he intuited in 2016 and then again in 24, that there was an emotion out there among many, many people, a feeling undefended, a feeling unseen and unheard by the system, a feeling defenseless against chaos and entropy, and that political emotion was underserved, was under-recognized by those of us in the media, it was underserved by the Democratic Party, it was underserved by his own different flavor of Republicans, and he was able to see that. People wanted to be advocated for.
Getting back to the original question, Giridharadas continued, “Now, I have every quibble with every actual thing he wanted to do to advocate for them. But he won for a reason. He won because he was able to see that. When you start having Gestapo raids in America and we start becoming a country where, as in East Germany, a knock on the door is the thing people are thinking about instead of the brilliant idea they want to go create. Then we are moving very, very far from his, the president worrying about what regular people need, right?”
First of all, the Gestapo was the Nazi secret police while the East German communists had the Stasi. Second of all, if enforcing the law is Gestapo or Stasi-like behavior, what does that make non-immigration police activity? Meanwhile, those who are in the country legally should have nothing to worry about.
Here is a transcript for the January 28 show:
MSNBC Morning Joe
1/28/2025
6:35 AM ET
JONATHAN LEMIRE: More and more people who do not have criminal records are indeed rounded up. Do you think that's the flashpoint for some sort of real pushback, public outcry, the sort of protest movement to this, at least to this point, we haven't seen in this second Trump term?
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS: Here's what I think the real tipping point is, and will be: the thing that I would say Donald Trump deserves most praise for is that he intuited in 2016 and then again in 24, that there was an emotion out there among many, many people, a feeling undefended, a feeling unseen and unheard by the system, a feeling defenseless against chaos and entropy, and that political emotion was underserved, was under-recognized by those of us in the media, it was underserved by the Democratic Party, it was underserved by his own different flavor of Republicans, and he was able to see that. People wanted to be advocated for.
Now, I have every quibble with every actual thing he wanted to do to advocate for them. But he won for a reason. He won because he was able to see that. When you start having Gestapo raids in America and we start becoming a country where, as in East Germany, a knock on the door is the thing people are thinking about instead of the brilliant idea they want to go create. Then we are moving very, very far from his, the president worrying about what regular people need, right?
