Friday's edition of The 11th Hour on MSNBC devolved into hyperbolic name-calling when host Brian Williams compared Republicans to "killers" and the Lincoln Project's Steve Schmidt comparing them to fascists all while Democrats do nothing to stop them.
After Schmidt, who for seemingly unknown reasons used to consider himself a Republican, attacked Democrats for not doing anything to fight back against Republican attempts to extinguish democracy, Williams wondered:
Why, in your view, having heard your answer out just there, has there been such an appalling lack of consequences, and is it the cost of good intentions? As I always say, is it because Democrats culturally tend to be former student council presidents who just happen to be involved in a gun fight with killers every day?
Schmidt responded by comparing Republicans to fascists, implying they were similar to the Nazis, and that Democrats were similar to Neville Chamberlain:
We've had some hard-core Democratic leaders in this country's history who haven't lacked for toughness in the moment. In the aftermath of the Second World War when he was writing his memoirs, you know, Churchill described it as the unnecessary war. And when he talked about the rise of fascism in retrospect, he said the malice of the wicked was aided by the weakness of the virtuous.
Continuing with his wildly irresponsible and false rhetoric, Schmidt claimed, "We have hundreds of pieces of maliced legislation intended to deny people on the basis of skin color the right to vote. We have hundreds of pieces of legislation that have been filed aimed to nullify the results of a legal election to declare the loser the winner."
After Schmidt's long diatribe, Williams declared that the media wasn't biased enough against Republicans:
Steve, what are we doing wrong that we could be doing better? I have noticed in the news media business this false equivalence reporting is sneaking back in like nothing ever happened, like we woke up in 1978, all the old rules and all the old politicians were back in action. What can the media do to better enforce the idea, this was an attempt to change the outcome of a presidential election and, as one of your colleagues put it tonight, only one political party now remains in service to that democracy you just spoke of.
Williams will never admit it because it goes against his narrative, but the efforts he refers to failed spectacularly because Republicans said no.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the candidate for the "one political party now remains in service to that democracy" running to be governor of Virginia, noted election conspiracy theorist Terry McAuliffe, just campaigned with fellow election conspiracy theorist Stacey Abrams.
Schmidt didn't answer the question, instead just repeating that "the political leadership of the country to be able to speak out in favor of these values."
This segment was sponsored by Safelite.
Here's the transcript:
MSNBC's The 11th Hour with Brian Williams
October 22, 2021
11:24 PM ETBRIAN WILLIAMS: Why, in your view, having heard your answer out just there, has there been such an appalling lack of consequences, and is it the cost of good intentions? As I always say, is it because Democrats culturally tend to be former student council presidents who just happen to be involved in a gun fight with killers every day?
STEVE SCHMIDT: We've had some hard-core Democratic leaders in this country's history who haven't lacked for toughness in the moment. In the aftermath of the Second World War when he was writing his memoirs, you know, Churchill described it as the unnecessary war. And when he talked about the rise of fascism in retrospect, he said the malice of the wicked was aided by the weakness of the virtuous. None of this is unpredictable. We have hundreds of pieces of maliced legislation intended to deny people on the basis of skin color the right to vote. We have hundreds of pieces of legislation that have been filed aimed to nullify the results of a legal election to declare the loser the winner, and other extreme politics and policies as we've seen this abandonment of a commitment, the small-L liberal tradition and policies to the American republic to the idea of democracy and again it's important to understand democracy is the only moral form of government that's ever been because it's the only system of government that's ever been that places the individual, the human being, on top of the power of the state. All others place the state on top of the human being, and that usually ends with disaster.
WILLIAMS: Steve, what are we doing wrong that we could be doing better? I have noticed in the news media business this false equivalence reporting is sneaking back in like nothing ever happened, like we woke up in 1978, all the old rules and all the old politicians were back in action. What can the media do to better enforce the idea, this was an attempt to change the outcome of a presidential election and, as one of your colleagues put it tonight, only one political party now remains in service to that democracy you just spoke of.
SCHMIDT: Well, I think it's incumbent on the political leadership of the country to be able to speak out in favor of these values. The reality is these ideas have sustained the country through all matter of crisis for more than 245 years, and they’re being challenged. They are being contested. They need to be defended. The assertion of the values that built the country and calling out the dividers. It's an important moment. We have a real-life extremist moment in this country, a real-life movement in this country. It has, it has to be confronted. It has to be confronted directly and honestly and contextually, understanding that this isn't the first time we have seen movements like this arise. We’ve seen this before. And the fact of the matter is, turns out there were hot embers under these ash heaps that we thought were extinguished. So this moment requires, as have previous moments, political leaders who can talk about, one, what we have in common, but the profound importance in defense of the governmental systems that protect human dignity, human life, the pursuit of happiness. That's what's at stake.
