Rachel Maddow's incredible take down of Drumpf's Phoenix speech.

[longship]

Last edited Mon Sep 5, 2016, 01:33 AM - Edit history (4)

As usual, it has significant historic context. This is why I love Rachel. She is geeky and beyond criticism when she presents a story like this.

MS/NBC thought so highly about it that they rebroadcast it the next night when Kornacki subbed for Rachel.

This is brilliant.

Here:

On edit: Rachel's tag line, after she cites Drumpf's evisceration of the mainline GOP candidates.

That weed that grew up into the space that the tree used to occupy is a weed our country has seen before. It's in our soil. It grows when we give it space. It is a weed we have uprooted before. It does keep growing back perniciously. It is one of the ugliest things we have ever been as a country. And we are now living it in our generation again.

[doc03]

1. I agree she is the best but nobody watches MSNBC unless they are

already Democrats. Pretty much meaningless. Where are the Hillary surrogates pushing back on the Trump people on all the other
networks?

[longship]

3. Pshaw! So maybe she should stop?

After all, it's apparently all useless since Rachel just preaches to the choir.
Maybe she should just shut up.

Or maybe we ought to trumpet this kind of thing. Celebrate it. Spread it beyond MS/NBC. We all need to do our part in this.

That is the solution.

Best regards.

[chillfactor]

2. I watched Rachael...

when she aired this segment....and was awe-struck with the research that she and her team had done. This was a powerful, powerful segment and it clearly labeled the lying republicans as a party heading into oblivion.

Thank you for posting this video.....so I could view this segment again....I hope many DUers will take the time to view this video......whether you like Rachel or not.....this is a video should not...I repeat....should not be missed!

[longship]

4. Thank you very much.

Rachel, when she is good, she is extraordinarily good. I listen to her every night on her audio podcast. I was blown away by this one. And Kornacki repeated it the next night when Rachel was off.

Everybody should view it. It is a stunning historic retrospective on what is happening politically today.

[Warpy]

5. She's right that nativism (which bizarrely never includes INDNs)

rears its ugly head in this country from time to time. In the past, it's coincided with huge waves of immigrants. The anti Catholic nativism she cites actually peaked in Philadelphia with the Nativist Riots of 1844, which were against the masses of Irish fleeing the potato famine and centered around which bible the kiddies would read in school and which Ten Commandments would be posted to keep them from sinning.

Democrats successfully blamed the Whigs and the Nativist Party for the riots, which produced 15 quick fatalities (odd considering both sides were using cannon) and an untold number of people injured by knives, bottles, chains, and whatever came to hand. The riots ended when enough troops were dispatched to keep the peace.

Anti Chinese sentiment happened a bit later out west, the waves of immigration starting with the 1849 gold rush and extending right up through the "Yellow Peril" garbage of the 1950s and 1960s. The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in the 1880s, long after the Republicans were up and running, but they largely weren't to blame for it.

So her time line is a bit off, but the periodic ugliness of "We were here first, we got ours, now y'all have to go back where you came from" is a fact in this country. It has happened before, nobody went home, and nobody will this time, either.

Besides, my family has been here a lot longer than Drumpf's family. I think he should go first.

[longship]

7. She really does not nail down the timeline that precisely.

Mostly, Rachel gets it correctly, which is all it needs to do. Her point is made.

In a political vacuum -- a tree uprooted, as she says -- these weeds gain root. And spread. Her tag line is awesome.

[Warpy]

9. It can be comforting to know this bullshit has happened before

and has been even uglier in the past. However, it's not so much a political vacuum as the lower working class stressed to the maximum by a rotten economy and encouraged to blame all the wrong people.

[longship]

10. I think the second part of what you wrote here is precisely Rachel's point.

I do not go along with the first part, however. That would be a GOP narrative, that things are somehow bad. Blame Obama and the Clintons apparently. Which is what they do.

Thanks for the response, though.

[Hekate]

15. When I watched it the second time, like you I felt oddly consoled knowing we had lived thru this...

...before, and that the country righted itself in the end.

This is ugly and it's horrible and it shames us -- but there is hope. There is definitely hope.

[YOHABLO]

6. Trump supporters are the New "K(No)W Nothings" literally.

Last edited Sun Sep 4, 2016, 11:41 PM - Edit history (1)

[longship]

8. Correction. That's "Know Nothing". nt

[YOHABLO]

12. True, but it could go either way "No Nothings" or "Know Nothings" depends how you look at it

[longship]

13. "No nothings" makes no sense whatsoever.

And in historic context obfuscates what the know nothing's were about. That was precisely Rachel's message which seems to be sadly missing here.

[Hekate]

14. They were a secret society. When members were asked if they were in it or what they knew about it...

...their uniform answer to all questions was "I Know Nothing." In other words, a flat denial of knowledge of the secret society and its activities. Hence the name: "The Know Nothings."

[young_at_heart]

11. "It is one of the ugliest things......"

Stomach-churning!!!

[Hekate]

16. KnRnBookmark. Thanks so much for posting it so I can retrieve it and share it

[Kathy M]

17. Thanks for posting video .... it is a good one . Hopefully it gets viewed far and wide .

I do appreciate her shows , with the research she and her team puts into shows .

This one in particular was very good .... it explained in 2 words whats been going on since the primary's that clicks / makes sense . Know Nothing

Good to know we have been through this before ..... hopefully this will be short lived .

[Gothmog]

18. Rachel did a great job on that show

[longship]

19. As I said, Kornacki repeated it the next night when he subbed for Rachel.

On Wed, she did an extra hour at midnight, specifically to address Drumpf's Phoenix speech. This video was the result. As usual, Rachel's history of this rubbish was well sourced, her explanation of "know nothings" particularly so. And thus their connection to today's GOP.

I particularly like her anthrax allusion. It's in the soil, waiting to come out, yet again, when the host is weak.

My best to you.

[drmeow]

20. Great analysis

except - IMO she played too much of the clip of Trump and she played parts with fit in with the Ailes playbook. All she needed was a very short clip to get the point across. By airing more and by airing the "Willie Horten" like details Trump describes, she gives him more of a voice than she should.

[longship]

21. Well, that may be a matter of opinion.

Myself, I think the clip is quite damning as Drumpf is plainly off the deep end.

But a shorter clip might have got the message across equally well.

It's no matter as it is what it is. This is what Rachel's editors went with.

[drmeow]

22. The issue is that when you present

some of the things Drumpf says, people remember the things that are said not the point you are trying to make. For people who already are disgusted with him, it doesn't make a difference. But for people who are on the fence, repeating his accusations and descriptions of people killed by undocumented immigrants makes them more aware of those events and makes those events more salient. The extreme example is when Nixon said "I am not a crook" it planted the idea that he was a crook in people's minds. Playing lengthy examples of the horrible things that Drumpf says has the potential to seriously backfire. From a messaging perspective, it is far more effective to stay away from those types of details.

The clip can be equally damning without including specific details - for some people what that segment potentially did was plant the image of "illegals" bludgeoning people to death with hammers and that is NOT something you want to plant in someone's head if they are at all on the fence. There is a not insignificant risk that what those people will come away from your segment thinking is not "that man is a menace" but "maybe 'illegals' are a risk." The human brain tends to fail tremendously at logic - and liberals have a long history of trying to use reason and logic to support our positions without recognizing how the brains of the majority of people don't really respond well to that.

[longship]

23. Well, the entire thing is disgusting.

Where does one cut it off? Or does one choose not to show any of it?

Rachel's editors chose what they did. If one is not utterly disgusted by what they presented, I guess one might argue that it somehow promotes the Drumpf agenda.

Myself, I see Drumpf's diatribe the way Rachel and her editors undoubtedly see it, an exercise in racist, xenophobic rubbish, which is what the entire segment is about.

YMMV, in which case you may be missing the entire point.