MSNBC's Chris Hayes exposes one big mistake in the way the Trump administration is going about their attempt to destroy American democracy. Whether it means there's still a chance to stop it is up to all of us.
HAYES: One thing you hear from people who study authoritarianism or who have experienced its rise firsthand in other countries is that they've been genuinely shocked at how quickly the Trump administration is moving compared to other regimes.
Earlier this year, The Guardian spoke to one political scientist who studied this at Harvard who said, "Trump is throwing authoritarian punches at a much greater rate than any of these other cases in their first year in power." "We don't yet know how many of those punches will land or how society will respond."
Usually these kinds of autocratic incursions move more slowly and deliberately. For instance, in Vladimir Putin's Russia, it took two years before he was able to successfully bully a late night comedy show that mocked him, called Puppets, off the air.
Donald Trump got Jimmy Kimmel pulled in just eight months, although of course, Kimmel came right back. And I think there's a reason for that. They are simply going too fast.
I really think the speed at which they are trying to rip apart a free and open society is a huge tactical mistake on their part.
For some reason it reminds me of these videos I keep seeing in my social media feeds. Have you seen these ones? Don't ask me why, but I'm obsessed with them. They're like computer simulations of various cars driving very fast over like hundred speed bumps.
And the takeaway is pretty simple. The really huge vehicles, like the pickup trucks and the minivans, they do better at top speeds. They can sort of drive over them fast, but the smaller cars, well, they usually can't handle it. They end up doing that, just like crashing and burning.
If either of them just slowed down a bit, they'd get through this just fine. But I kind of feel like the administration is trying to do this. It's like speed run over all the obstacles, just trying to like plow over it. But I am also not so sure they can handle it at the speed they're going.
That they're doing so much so quickly, people really are taking notice. They're at 40 percent approval rating the polls. And they don't like what they're seeing. It was shocking to people, I think across the political spectrum, to see Jimmy Kimmel yanked off the air after a mafia style threat from an administration official. Or to see James Comey indicted. It's jarring to see mass secret police forces or military troops on American streets.
It's not creeping authoritarianism subtly taking hold while no one is looking. They're just doing it in front of all of us. So the backlash has been real.
And Disney bringing back Kimmel is an example of how that backlash has power too. It may just be the case that one advantage for the people who so deeply want to defend American democracy and freedom is the reckless speed the Trump administration is going, because they don't actually have the public behind them.
What they're doing is genuinely scary. It's genuinely dangerous, but is also very unpopular.
Yes it is.
