It’s a good thing we have MSNBC to tell us just how reprehensible we, the American people are capable of being. At least, that was certainly the way things were portrayed in a discussion Wednesday night on MSNBC’s The 11th Hour hosted by Stephanie Ruhle, and featuring former GOP congressman David Jolly, Washington Post columnist Philip Bump, and Business Week writer Max Chafkin. The group bemoaned the current political tide as though the world had all but come to an end, but at least there was a note of optimism, in their security about their own moral and intellectual superiority.
The discussion was dripping with contempt not merely for Trump himself, but for all the millions of average, everyday Americans who voted for him, and for any exceptions they may have taken to the previous administration, for any reason.
Take DEI, for example. Ruhle plaintively asked if one single CEO in America had ever lamented that DEI was “standing in the way of productivity,” (as though that was even the sole imaginable consideration). Chafkin blithely assured her “No, and for like a decade they’ve been arguing the exact opposite,” which in his view made the policy’s recent demise “stunning.”
Never mind polls showing large numbers of people’s discomfort with DEI programs, and perception that they actually tend to aggravate or even create feelings of racial tension, distrust, grievance, and victimhood rather than solve them. Never mind that some of the largest corporations in the world have indeed taken an enormous hit from public backlash against such policies.
It is very hard to resist the conclusion, for example, that the plummeting of NFL ratings, the low turnout for the more recent Star Wars films and shows, sudden decline in popularity of certain video games, etc., was directly connected to their increasing politicization along such lines. Don’t worry about that, though, as Bump assured us, “This isn’t about DEI.”
On immigration, Ruhle and Jolly tried to paint an image of Trump going further on mass deportations that his voters bargained for, suggesting he was going to send authorities into schools to abduct children:
RUHLE: Have they moved where he's taken the ball?
JOLLY: Donald Trump won 49-48 and politics is the art of framing. So if you say that there's a criminal with an outstanding warrant who needs to be deported, 80 percent of the country will say, “yeah, that's great.”
RUHLE: 90 percent.
JOLLY: Yeah, 90 percent. If you say, I'm going to go to a school or church and rip a sixth grade daughter away from her father, and neither one of them will know what their future holds- all of a sudden, those numbers plummet in terms of what supports it.
Of course, the more likely scenario would be the arrest of illegal immigrant adults who work there.
As they were getting ready to go to a commercial break, Jolly took up a position of moral and intellectual superiority as he opined: “Democrats have taken more responsible position of trying to figure out, what is the role of the United States in the world right now? How do we protect the liberties of all Americans, regardless of whether they're marginalized communities or not?”
Rule equated Democrats with insurance companies who get no love until the natural disaster comes. Building off that, Jolly lamented how Democrats “have the burden of protecting what is right in the country. And what Donald Trump has done is he's added fuel to this very primal, nativist instinct, that if I get mine, I don't care what anybody else has.”
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
MSNBC’s The 11th Hour
01/22/25
11:09 PM[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: TRUMP PRIORITIZES IMMIGRATION, BORDER IN WH RETURN]
STEPHANIE RUHLE: Let's talk about immigration, though, because Donald Trump- already pushing, you know, sweeping changes. And he says-
DAVID JOLLY: Yeah-
RUHLE: “Immigration won me the election. It's what the American people want.” And he has somewhat of a point that the American people have moved further to the right-
JOLLY: Yeah, yeah I know-
RUHLE: But- But he- Have they moved where he's taken the ball?
JOLLY: Donald Trump won 49-48 and politics is the art of framing. So if you say that there's a criminal with an outstanding warrant who needs to be deported, 80 percent of the country will say, “yeah, that's great.”
RUHLE: 90 percent.
JOLLY: Yeah, 90 percent. If you say, I'm going to go to a school or church and rip a sixth grade daughter away from her father, and neither one of them will know what their future holds- all of a sudden, those numbers plummet in terms of what supports it.
And I think what is obvious about what Donald Trump and JD Vance are doing, is the xenophobia and the dark themes of anti-immigration. He suspended the refugee resettlement program, one of the purest programs this country has. To bring in- “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the homeless, the wretched refuse,” to use- Emma Lazarus words in her sonnet on the- the Statue of Liberty. He suspended that program, and he abandoned the American ideals of what immigration actually looks like. And it's hard to see Donald Trump make all of these moves and not say, he’s- he's responding to a very dark, xenophobic calling.
Everybody understands. Find the- the violent criminal who shouldn't be here and deport them. That's fine. That's not what Donald Trump’s doing this week. Donald Trump is taking an anti-immigrant agenda that we’ve seen in Western Europe in the past decade and realizing “I’m going to build my second administration on this.”
(…)
11:12 PM
STEPHANIE RUHLE: Let's talk about DEI, because now Donald Trump has this order, right? All federal DEI employees are immediately on paid leave, right? What they're doing- not even worth it to come to work until they're going to be done completely, and ending all initiatives. Help me understand this, I- I've- read the numbers, I speak to c-suite executives all the time, I do see that many people in corporate America, at a CEO level, are fatigued by DEI. But is there any business out there, that you cover, that has said to you, “Goddammit, we would have made billions this year if it wasn't for DEI. It is standing in the way of productivity?” A single one?
MAX CHAFKIN: No, and for like a decade they've been arguing the exact opposite, and that's what makes this- period just so- kind of stunning. And- and you could say, well, maybe it was cynicism before when, when you had all these- finance CEOs, these tech CEOs sort of- making a big show of DEI. Or, maybe it's cynicism now, or maybe it's a little bit of both, and- kind of, that’s- that's probably where I would land.
DAVID JOLLY: Yeah.
PHILIP BUMP: By the way, it's worth noting, of course, that white grievance is a central part of Donald Trump's politics, and this is absolutely a white grievance play. I mean, when you're revoking things that were instituted by Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, 30 years before DEI existed as a concept, like- this isn't about DEI.
RUHLE: Are there any voters- again, I get the fatigue of it, but at the end of the day, Donald Trump is going to be evaluated, right? People want to be socially free, financially secure, physically safe. Are the things that he's doing in these three days going to get the American people any closer to that?
JOLLY: No, people want to be wealthy. And in four years, if the economy is better and people feel like they are better off because of Donald Trump, then their allegiance to the Republican Party will be the same.
But I think- much of the country, as seen by the votes in November, also understand that there's more to the American ideal and our human spirit than wealth, and that the Democratic Party is fighting for something greater than just the economy and greater than putting money in people's pockets. And that is a balance, at times.
We see it with DEI, we see it with the economy, we see it with protecting the environment. That- Donald Trump's theory of governing is, I'm going to burn everything white hot, and it doesn't matter if it crashes when I'm done. Democrats have taken a more responsible position of trying to figure out, what is the role of the United States in the world right now? How do we protect the liberties of all Americans, regardless of whether they're marginalized communities or not?
And it's a different view of the world, and it's also why I go back to my original statement. Millions of Americans tonight, feel like they don't have a voice, and they feel like Donald Trump truly is a historic danger to the direction of the country. And those voices have to be heard and respected, as much as all the MAGA megaphones that we're getting right now out of Washington, DC. And I think it's a challenge for how we cover that over the next four years.
RUHLE: But do you think there's also a frustration or a challenge for Democrats in- what you’ve just laid out, how they had been focused on protecting the American people in every way possible? In that effort- to protect- maybe sometimes they're now going to get no credit. Right?
JOLLY: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
RUHLE: It's like- it's like when you're the insurance provider, nobody cares about you until there's a disaster. And then Donald Trump shows up and says, “Why the hell are we paying for insurance? Let's let it rip, until a disaster comes.”
JOLLY: I'm going to make an analogy here. Progressive evangelism is on the outs. Evangelism that ignores the rights of minorities, that ignores the rights of the LGBT community and the immigrants- as we heard, the bishop at the Washington cathedral recently, that is what is supporting MAGA right now.
Democrats are in a similar situation. They're on the outs because they have the burden of protecting what is right in the country. And what Donald Trump has done is he's added fuel to this very primal, nativist instinct, that if I get mine, I don't care what anybody else has. Democrats have the burden of trying to protect the civil liberties of people, trying to protect the- the ideals of America and the world, trying to lead the world forward. And that contest was lost in November, and- Democrats feel defeated by it.
But I don't think it's defeat. I think it's just fatigue. And- the spirit and the ideals of the Democratic Party, I think, ultimately win out. But boy, this is a really tough chapter.
