MS NOW's Velshi Compares Trump, ICE to Nazis: 'This Is Not Hyperbole'

On Friday's The 11th Hour show, MS NOW host Ali Velshi devoted a segment to comparing the Donald Trump administration, declaring that the President is trying to make ICE accountable only to him. He then had on liberal historian and University of Toronto Professor Jason Stanley to claim that Trump is promoting fascism like 1930s Germany.

After beginning the segment with some polling suggesting that the President's approval ratings are down, Velshi intoned:

Trump is losing the country. And here's the thing that should worry you much more than the polling. ... He doesn't seem to care. A President who governs against the will of the people he serves isn't really accountable to them, and a President who isn't accountable to the people he serves isn't really a President in the way that we've come to understand that word. This is not hyperbole.

There are no funnier words on MS NOW than "This is not hyperbole." 

The MS NOW leaned into hyperbole, claiming that under Trump, ICE "terrorizes" immigrants and minorities, and then argued that the President is trying to make ICE into "a force that answers to Donald Trump and to no one else." Velshi invoked leftist hyperbole machine Tim Snyder, who puts the word "fascism" into every other sentence:

This administration is working to make our government less accountable. The historian Timothy Snyder put it this way: "The only advantage we have over the Jews in Germany in the 1930s is that we know their history. And because we can know their history, we can recognize the patterns, not to be surprised, and to act effectively," end quote.

After bringing aboard Stanley as a guest, Velshi began by making more Nazi comparisons:

... it may get boring to some people, but we've actually got to go back to the early 1930s in Germany to remember that stuff that looks like this happened quite frequently. Little laws that were taken away, police that were meant to be homicide investigators all of a sudden moved over here to harass people -- people who thought, "This is crazy and it will go away," and, "How bad can it get?" It's all playing itself out. And you and I puzzle about the fact that: How can this happen in 2026? How can we watch authoritarianism set in and not have an adequate response?

Stanley, who was so panicked by Trump he moved to Canada, pushed for resistance to Trump as he began:

Yeah, I mean, I don't puzzle about it in 2026. I've been on these networks for eight years now saying this is a would-be fascist dictator, this is a fascist movement behind him. They know what they're doing. And the reason that it's not going to succeed is because of journalists like you, Ali, and your colleagues -- because of police officers who will refuse to do orders that are immoral and illegal -- because of military officers that will refuse to follow unconstitutional orders.

A bit later, Stanley fearmongered:

And they are putting people in these concentration camps. The -- I say "concentration camps" because they're zones of lawlessness. They can take seemingly anyone they want and put them there. ... we're already the country that has the fourth highest incarceration rate in the world, and we're adding to that a system of concentration camps where they're putting people in for no reason at all, just because they say that they're threats. Now, they're saying radical leftists are threats. They're saying the same thing about radical leftists. We are literally living "First they came for" in real time.

So "this is not hyperbole"??

Transcript follows:

MS NOW's The 11th Hour

July 24, 2026

ALI VELSHI: Trump is losing the country. And here's the thing that should worry you much more than the polling. It actually has something to do with what you saw tonight. He doesn't seem to care. A President who governs against the will of the people he serves isn't really accountable to them, and a President who isn't accountable to the people he serves isn't really a President in the way that we've come to understand that word.

This is not hyperbole. I want to show you exactly where this is playing out right now, and it is under the banner of immigration enforcement. Donald Trump has dramatically built up the force carrying out his mass deportation agenda. ICE's budget has quadrupled since he took office. The agency has more than doubled in size -- 12,000 new agents and officers hired -- a lot of them patrol in masks in unmarked cars, and they are armed. We've talked about them before because that presence alone terrorizes immigrant communities.

But more than that, it terrorizes communities of color. And more than that, if you've been to Minnesota or Chicago or L.A. lately, it terrorizes communities in general. And that was always the point. But let's look at what's happened after two recent ICE killings because you start to see something bigger than intimidation. You start to see a system built so that ICE answers to no one but Trump himself. Again, this is not hyperbole. This is hyper specific.

In Houston, an ICE agent shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo -- 52 years old, a father of three, no criminal record, not even the target of the operation. His family says he was close to getting legal status after 35 years in the United States. Six days later, in Biddeford, Maine, another agent shot and killed Joan Sebastian Duran Guerrero -- 25 years old, also a father legally authorized to work. He had a Social Security number, also not the target of any investigation or traffic stop. Both men were shot in their vehicles.

In both cases, DHS's first claim -- I don't even have to tell you this -- you can probably guess it on your own: "The men used their cars as weapons against agents." In both cases, that claim didn't hold up against video and witness accounts, and, in both cases, DHS will not release the agents' names -- which, if you've been watching this beat, you know, is a pattern. The AP, however, after speaking with close relatives, identified the agent in the main shooting anyway, and his name is David Brouillette. His own relatives describe a history of violent, frightening behavior. The Washington Post reports a judge found him to be not credible in court testimony last year.

Both outlets reached out to Brouillette for comment, but he did not reply. So there were already questions about how well DHS is actually vetting these agents as they have this hiring surge. After these two killings, DHS actually paused most traffic stops. Okay, that's in theory a good thing. Said they were going to wear body cameras and all that kind of stuff -- 12 hours later -- 12 hours later, Donald Trump reversed that decision. He ordered ICE back onto the road, doing exactly the kind of stops that got two innocent men killed. He posted it himself on social media. He said, quote, "The men and women of ICE are doing a great job -- one that has to be done. We cannot give up on one of ICE's most important and effective crime fighting tools, the traffic stop."

Just sit with that for a second. The President of the United States personally intervening to make sure that a masked, unmarked, armed federal force faces zero check on its power, and doing it through social media. Except there's nothing about this that is isolated. After Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed in Minnesota back in January, state investigators said that the federal government wouldn't hand over evidence in that case. Most of it only arrived last week -- six months later. 

This week, ICE briefed the House Homeland Security Committee behind closed doors. Since January 2025, 53 reports of excessive force -- 32 have been closed, 21 are still open. One has been referred for discipline. And now the New York Times reports that federal agents have been told that the FBI will not investigate assault claims that are made against federal immigration agents anymore. Just not going to be investigated. So knock yourself out if you've got a complaint.

DHS and Justice deny that, but, given how little evidence they've shared with state and local authorities already, a policy like that would leave ICE to police itself. Now, I want to be careful with the history here because it matters. When Trump's first administration separated children from their families, we understood very clearly that the cruelty was, in fact, the point.

Separating people from their families -- it's about the worst thing you can do -- is designed to deter people from coming to the United States. Now, what's happening now is cruel, too, but I don't think deterrence is the goal anymore. I think the goal is actually broader than that. It's actually the creation of a force that answers to Donald Trump and to no one else, and whose presence is just meant to unsettle everyone, not just immigrants. We're at the point where we have to say the plain thing. This administration is working to make our government less accountable. The historian Timothy Snyder put it this way: "The only advantage we have over the Jews in Germany in the 1930s is that we know their history. And because we can know their history, we can recognize the patterns, not to be surprised, and to act effectively," end quote.

That's the assignment -- not to panic, but to pay attention on purpose so we're not surprised by what comes next, and to be ready with a plan for November 3rd. Back with me is Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, a colleague of the aforementioned professor Timothy Snyder -- works out of my hometown, which I miss a lot. He's the author of a book called Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. Jason, again, it may get boring to some people, but we've actually got to go back to the early 1930s in Germany to remember that stuff that looks like this happened quite frequently.

Little laws that were taken away, police that were meant to be homicide investigators all of a sudden moved over here to harass people -- people who thought, "This is crazy and it will go away," and, "How bad can it get?" It's all playing itself out. And you and I puzzle about the fact that: How can this happen in 2026? How can we watch authoritarianism set in and not have an adequate response?

JASON STANLEY, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO: Yeah, I mean, I don't puzzle about it in 2026. I've been on these networks for eight years now saying this is a would-be fascist dictator, this is a fascist movement behind him. They know what they're doing. And the reason that it's not going to succeed is because of journalists like you, Ali, and your colleagues -- because of police officers who will refuse to do orders that are immoral and illegal -- because of military officers that will refuse to follow unconstitutional orders.

That's the only reason we are not in a fully authoritarian situation. It's been clear from the beginning, and, in particular, as you pointed out, it's been clear from the very beginning of this regime -- Trump's second term -- that he has no intention of broadening his popular support. You know, I've been saying this in the very beginning. He's not making a single attempt to win over a single --

VELSHI: Which is why we have gerrymandering, which is why we've got the SAVE Act, which is why he did a primetime speech talking about how the vote can't be trusted. None of that involves winning an election with extra votes. It's winning an election, possibly, with fewer votes.

STANLEY; Yeah, he has no intention of winning -- of winning an election with more votes. It's not the route he's going, and we're already well down this road. And, as you pointed out the role -- ICE has a very particular role to play. And it's very obvious what their role is here. Steve Bannon already said it. They're going to flood the polling places. They're speaking in the most threatening possible ways about -- about potential fraudulent voters, you know, and what they're going to do to them.

They're going to intimidate the heck out of voters and more. They're going to intimidate -- intimidate poll workers at elections. And what, what we're now allowing them to do as a country, and we need to stop allowing them to do this is -- is acting with total impunity. They're doing it in immigration, but they're just -- they're going to -- it's -- they're going to broaden it out. The message they're sending is, "Everyone is a criminal -- anyone can be a criminal."

VELSHI: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

STANLEY: They're arresting students. They're detaining students with visas. They're detaining people who are clearly here legally --

VELSHI: Well, they have this weird -- they have this weird rule, which they got that Columbia student on, right, that he's a threat to national security because he participated in one of the protests at Columbia University against -- against Israel's actions in Gaza. It's like there was once a free speech. And, in fact, free speech is not about Twitter. It's about the government. But the government apparently deemed this guy to be a national security risk.

STANLEY: Yeah, they're going to do everything they can. I mean, it is just to be put in what they're building a mass -- massive number of concentration camps. They're building a system of concentration camps. It's not just on the borders right now. It's national. And they are putting people in these concentration camps. The -- I say "concentration camps" because they're zones of lawlessness. They can take seemingly anyone they want and put them there. And it's not clear how to get access to them. They're often away from courts, far away from people's lawyers and families. So they're experimenting with that.

This -- we're already the country that has the fourth highest incarceration rate in the world, and we're adding to that a system of concentration camps where they're putting people in for no reason at all, just because they say that they're threats. Now, they're saying radical leftists are threats. They're saying the same thing about radical leftists. We are literally living "First they came for" in real time. First they came for the immigrants.

Now, "First they came for" starts with, "First they came for the communists." They're doing that second now. But -- but they are -- they are really just -- they're, "Oh, you let us put everyone in these concentration camps without legal with -- when we just said they were just, you know, threats. So now we're going to -- now we're going to broaden that." And even if we don't have to actually fill these camps up, they're tools of intimidation.

VELSHI: Yeah. And, by the way, there are people in -- in these detention centers who have habeas corpus cases to get out. And then a judge puts a bond on them because they are a flight risk. It's like you're, you're trying to deport them. What's -- what's a flight risk for somebody you're trying to actually deport? They are putting every possible legal block up to do that. But we still have fighters in this country -- people who are prepared to stand by these people. And I do want to point out you and Tim Snyder and Marci Shore are in my hometown, and you are building a world class department of study of, of authoritarianism and this kind of thing. And, as a result, we will all be better informed. So thank you as always, Jason. Good to see you. Jason Stanley from the University of Toronto.