Saturday's edition of MSNBC's The Weekend was one, long primal scream of frustration over the failure of voters to understand - and be duly stampeded into supporting Biden - by how dangerous Donald Trump supposedly was.
Much attention was paid to a video that was briefly reposted to Trump's social media feed that included, in blurry letters, a mention of a "united Reich," which was taken by the panel to reflect Trump's plan to replicate in America something akin to Nazi Germany.
As you'll see in the video, the panel agonized over how much of a problem the voting public was to them. Former Republican National Committee Chair Micahel Steele suggested that "there's fascism every day" and huffed that the public was "numbing to it."
There was also the usual disdain for voters who didn't live their obsessive fantasy that was always on the brink of destruction by Republicans:
MINI TIMMARAJU: It is by design, this shock and awe. We're going to do so much crazy stuff that people will not be able to parse it out: that's just Donald Trump being crazy.
(...)
STEELE: The former president is giving us the framing for the America he wants to create: an American Reich. What was stunning to me about that was how it landed.
ALICIA MENENDEZ: With a thud?
STEELE: Yeah! So it wasn't just me.
Host Alicia Menendez and Steele fantasized about putting hands on people and sharing them until their brains worked to their liking:
MENENDEZ: The recognition of a necessity to take people by the shoulders [mimics shaking someone] and say, this is not normal.
STEELE: [Also mimics shaking someone] Snap out of it!
"We have to keep spelling out for voters," added Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All. "It's that they're not paying close attention to every little gotcha moment..."
The panel's dire warning of a supposed impending American Reich and frustration with voters' insouciance brings to mind Salena Zito's brilliant observation about Trump from the 2016 campaign: “The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”
So, while the liberal media warns of an American Reich just around the corner, Trump supporters get his underlying message: things were headed in a very bad direction, and core American values need to be restored.
As for Biden's message, it's both literally and figuratively hard for voters to understand it, given his muddled speech and his attempt to play both sides of several issues.
Instead of listening to Biden, Americans get his message at the pump and the supermarket checkout, and by viewing the alarming images from the border and in the streets of American cities.
Here's the transcript:
MSNBC
The Weekend
5/25/24
8:00 am EDTALICIA MENENDEZ: Trump's outrageous campaign rhetoric: in another example, a video posted on his social media feed echoed the language of Nazi Germany. The post was later deleted. The campaign blamed it, as they so often do, on an unnamed staffer.
. . .
SYMONE SANDERS TOWNSEND: [Somber voice] It's really concerning. Very, very, very, very concerning. Was anybody else concerned this week?
MICHAEL STEELE: I'll just say, there's fascism every day. And the thing is, it is getting to the point where it just feels, oh, well, okay: no big deal. And I think that's for me, a very concerning thing. When you take that attitude and you layer it into other things we're going to be talking about over the next couple hours, from abortions to elections, to all these other things that impact people's lives every day.
What is systematically happening is a numbing to it. And that numbing is a way that -- when the thing hits -- everybody goes, why is everybody so upset? I don't get it. I don't understand. What are you picking up? What are you hearing out here from people, when they see a presidential candidate out there saying and doing the things in this space -- in this sort of fascist space.
EUGENE DANIELS: That's just sort of how Trump is, is often what you hear from even just regular voters, right? That's just Trump, that's how he talks. He's not serious. Those are the ways -- and some Democrats think that same way, too.
Like, we heard this from him before. And so, that numbing you're talking about hasn't been going on right now. It's been going on since 2015, when he came down the escalator, and changed the way people perceive how politicians should be speaking, the kinds of things they should be saying. What's appropriate, what's not. Moving the Overton Window so far, that when you talk to everyday voters, some lawmakers, they say, well, he's not actually going to do the things that he says he's going to do.
. . .
MINI TIMMARAJU: It is by design, this shock and awe. We're going to do so much crazy stuff that people will not be able to parse it out: that's just Donald Trump being crazy.
. . .
STEELE: The former president is giving us the framing for the America he wants to create: an American Reich. What was stunning to me about that was how it landed.
MENENDEZ: With a thud?
STEELE: Yeah! So it wasn't just me.
. . .
MENENDEZ: The recognition of a necessity to take people by the shoulders [mimics shaking someone] and say, this is not normal.
STEELE: [Also mimics shaking someone] Snap out of it! Yeah, it's not normal. And it's one of those things that I just find frustrating. The Trump campaign's excuse was, this was not a campaign video. It was created by a random account online and reposted by a staffer who clearly see the word, while the president was in court.
There is so many levels of bs in that statement. And they push it out there. And there is, there is no countermeasure to it. I mean, outside of what we just saw from the President and the First Gentleman -- the Second Gentleman.
There is sense I get in the communities out there that it's, it's just a thud. It just doesn't land the way I think -- when I heard it, I literally was stopped. I had to go back, and I've pulled it up and looked at it in the fine print of it, just to make sure that it wasn't being misreported, because it was so jarring. And yet [thumps hand on desk to make 'thud' sound.]
TIMMARAJU: But I think the point you made, Symone, about not everybody understanding the reference is why it was so smart of the President to do that video and say, those are Hitler's words. We have to keep spelling out for voters.
STEELE: Spelling out.
TIMMARAJU: We assume -- voters are smart. It's not that they're not smart. It's that they're not paying close attention to every little gotcha moment, right? And Trump is counting on it. He's counting on us not paying attention.
