MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch: There's a ‘Parallel’ Between Trump and Mussolini

August 2nd, 2019 4:28 PM

Every single day, MSNBC pundit Donny Deutsch proves why he is in the running for the most Trump-deranged journalist in the liberal media. He has suggested that Trump is a “Christian fascist,” that Trump supporters want to engage in a “political ethnic cleansing,” that Trump could bring about a second Holocaust, and that Democrats are "at war" with Republican "liars, cheaters, and stealers" in 2020.

On a Friday segment of Morning Joe, Deutsch repeated the tiring line that “Trump is a fascist." After being compared to Austin Powers character Fat Bastard by host Joe Scarborough, Deutsch said that watching the Trump rally in Ohio reminded him of Italian fascist leader Mussolini in terms of the “self-satisfaction at the chaos he's creating”:

 

 

You know, you used the Austin powers rather light metaphor. I, with all seriousness, the Mussolini -- when Mussolini is standing up on the terrace like this, with his face like that, to me, the parallels with Trump in terms of that self-satisfaction at the chaos he's creating, the parallels are stunning there.

One has to wonder if Deutsch realizes that most fascist leaders would not allow him to get paid handsomly to go on cable television every day and call them fascists. Since we don't live in a fascist country, MSNBC comparing Trump to aurthoritarian leaders is just a day ending in "y."

The full transcript is below. Click “expand” to read more.

Morning Joe

08/02/2019

6:09 A.M. Eastern

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Yeah, and when he's walking around like that, Donny Deutsch, if I'm a little kid, I'm worried. I’m just worried. Get in my stomach -- it’s an Austin Powers joke, we'll show you the clips later. So, Donny, Jonathan Lemire and the Associated Press wrote an article this past week about how Donald Trump keeps lowering the bar. That every time you think he has gone as low as he can possibly go, which is of course over three years, has been a great deal that even the most cynical White House observers before he started attacking Elijah and started attacking these women of color in Congress thought that Trump had gone as low as he could go. And as Jonathan reports, a lot of White House observers and people inside the White House were shocked that actually the frantic sort of management lifestyle has become even more detached and even more dangerous.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Yes.

SCARBOROUGH: And we don't know where the bottom is. We do know that he continues to shock by the day.

DONNY DETUSCH: You know, you used the Austin powers rather light metaphor. I, with all seriousness, the Mussolini -- when Mussolini is standing up on the terrace like this, with his face like that, to me, the parallels with Trump in terms of that self-satisfaction at the chaos he's creating, the parallels are stunning there. You know what's so ironic that coming off of -- to me pretty poor debates both nights for the Democrats, if Trump stood up and basically talked about the economy, talked about, "Hey, by the way, two benchmark Democratic strongholds, criminal reform and immigration; by the way, they brought up that Obama deported more people than I ever did; oh, by the way, they were arguing about criminal reform, I passed the most comprehensive criminal prison reform act." Stronghold Democratic benchmarks that he could own. Of course he doesn’t go there. The scary thing for me – and Joe, you and I talked about this last week as him being a transactional ideologue, is he's going to keep lowering it, keep digging, digging, digging into that base and then sometime around April or May of next year, pivot, and start acting somewhat normal and to your whole premise of the segment that because –

SCARBOROUGH: I don’t think that’s possible.

BRZEZINSKI: None of this is normal.

DETUSCH: So, so low, that when he starts just giving a Normandy speech and starts talking about why don't we re-look at health care a little bit, people are going to go “wow.” So there’s this mad irony happening here that worries me. Everybody keeps – Oh, he's going to keep going there. I think it’s the opposite, I think he's digging digging digging and then he’s going to pivot and then he’s really going to be tough to beat.