MS NOW contributor Anand Giridharadas joined Morning Joe on Thursday to cry fascism over the events in Minneapolis and continuing unrest after the shooting of Alex Pretti. He was later joined in his fascism claims by the ever-present Mika Brzezinski who teamed up with Giridharadas to tell viewers ‘we told you so.’
Giridharadas, and his famously odd hairdo, claimed ICE and CBP operations in Minnesota had made people weary of fascism in the US:
But what they are doing in Minneapolis was not a bug, it is a feature of fascism in this country. It is a feature of a project of using a reign of terror to have not just non-citizen criminals, which is what they claim, but all of us live in fear of them and bow to their pressure.
He then painted the situation around ICE and immigration enforcement as a cruelty test of American human nature:
Think with each of these actions, with each invasion of a city or some of these other policies, they are testing us. They're taking little biopsies of the American body politic. They're taking little tests of our character. They're trying to find out maybe the cruel tendency in every human being, the miserly tendency, the tendency to prefer to dominate other people instead of share with them, maybe that's dominant. That's what they're hoping to find out.
After Giridharadas finished his long-winded statements, Brzezinski joined in and feared ICE has already went too far for a fix:
I think there are many that think these are legitimate and real signs of trouble ahead, and at some point, you're not going to be able to put the toothpaste back in the tube.”
Brzezinski, as she did throughout Thursday's program, connected the events in Minnesota to new investigation in Fulton County, Georgia, where warrants had been served at election offices as evidence of a pending fascist state:
And there is so much going on in so many different places, And pick your poison, but pull back and look at the big picture. Regardless of the focus on Minneapolis, which is beyond - beyond painful and brutal, what has happened there with the killing of these two people. But if you pull back and you see Pam Bondi asking for voter rolls and you see the FBI going into Fulton County, pull back, it's not good.
In Mika fashion, she ended her tirade by claiming all fears of fascism Morning Joe stoked in the lead up to the 2024 Election were being proved right:
They're moving forward rapidly. And it is a plan that not only was laid out in black and white, but was announced by this president during his campaign. The word fascism was brought up. We used the word fascism a lot in the campaign, warning Americans. It was used because it matched the behavior, it matched the definition, and here we are.
The constant watering-down of phrases like fascism had been a constant feature, not a bug, of leftist language even before Trump, as seen with George Bush, Mitt Romney, and others.
Maybe instead of calling everything fascist, or Hitler, or Nazi, there should be an attempt to put better policies to get elected. Or, if you want, you can just scream “everything is fascist.”
The transcript is below. Click to expand:
MS NOW’s Morning Joe
January 29, 2026
7:07:18 AM Eastern
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS: (...) But what they are doing in Minneapolis was not a bug, it is a feature of fascism in this country. It is a feature of a project of using a reign of terror to have not just non-citizen criminals, which is what they claim, but all of us live in fear of them and bow to their pressure. And what you saw in Minneapolis is the wisdom of the crowds, of people realizing that this doesn't stop here. It doesn't stop with the worst of the worst. It doesn't stop with just undocumented immigrants. It doesn't stop with just immigrants who have their papers. It doesn't stop with naturalized citizens. It keeps going. In every society where this has happened, it keeps going unless people say, “No, you do not execute people.”
And certainly in the hierarchies of American life, you don't execute a white man who helped veterans learn to walk again and people say nothing. And so people are saying something.
(...)
7:13:25 AM Eastern
GIRIDHARADAS: I think with each of these actions, with each invasion of a city or some of these other policies, they are testing us. They're taking little biopsies of the American body politic. They're taking little tests of our character. They're trying to find out maybe the cruel tendency in every human being, the miserly tendency, the tendency to prefer to dominate other people instead of share with them, maybe that's dominant. That's what they're hoping to find out. Or maybe the other part of all of us and the other part of this country that is generous, that is open, that when my parents came from India to Shaker Heights, Ohio, in the 1970s, welcomed in, even though people didn't couldn't find on the map where they had come from, you're part of this. Maybe that tendency will win. And so they keep throwing out these tests, and then we have to answer the tests, and protesters answer the tests.
Every judge, you were covering this before, every judge who actually quickly says, “You can't do this,” those people are answering the test. These are all - this entire exercise is a test of our character and we have to, unfortunately for us, keep meeting this test every day. And it is remarkable to see regular people are on the front lines of meeting this test. It is people in the street. It is people who don't have fancy jobs, people who don't happen to run fancy universities, people who are not partners at fancy law firms. The heroes of the last year have been regular people with nothing to lose, many of whom may not have even ever met an immigrant in their life who say, “This is not me, this is not my country. Your test of my character fails.”
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: All right, well, I mean, I - test, yes. I think there are many that thinks these are legitimate and real signs of trouble ahead, and at some point, you're not going to be able to put the toothpaste back in the tube. And we may even be they're not trying to be hysterical, just trying to report the facts. And you can focus in on Minneapolis and you can say there are two American citizens that are dead and two state investigations that are being denied. Evidence being taken away from the state. Hennepin County doesn't even have the evidence to investigate something that happened in their jurisdiction. You have a judge saying, don't destroy the action - the evidence in the case You have a judge - judges doing court orders that have been violated time and time again by ICE. You have ICE breaking into homes, breaking into cars, asking people for their papers. This has escalated rapidly.
And there is so much going on in so many different places, and pick your poison, but pull back and look at the big picture. Regardless of the focus on Minneapolis, which is beyond - beyond painful and brutal, what has happened there with the killing of these two people. But if you pull back and you see Pam Bondi asking for voter rolls and you see the FBI going into Fulton County, pull back, it's not good.
