MSNBC's Chris Hayes Calls for the Spirit of Trump Supporters To Be 'Utterly Confronted and Destroyed'
An MSNBC host is calling for the movement that brought President Donald Trump to the White House to be “utterly confronted and destroyed.”
On Thursday night’s edition of “All In,” MSNBC host Chris Hayes ripped into Trump and his supporters saying that at a recent Trump rally — at which the North Carolina crowd chanted “send her back,” in reference to Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — “the darkest, ugliest impulses a political movement can cultivate” were “on full unapologetic display.”
Hayes insisted most Americans felt “revulsion” at what he called a “mob braying ‘send her back.’”
He said that America was “long past the point where anyone can ask with a straight face, ‘Where are the decent members of this political coalition?’”
“That crowd in the area; they get the illicit thrill of chanting racist slogans,” he said, before alleging that “warmongers” and other groups are having a heyday because of the Trump administration.
“It is a classic model of corrupt governance. The capo on the top and the many, many bosses below who are given control of their domain to do as they wish,” he said.
He then denigrated Trump’s supporters.
“But the base, what does the base get? The folks in that arena. Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? They get to chant. They get to revel in their own Americanness and primacy at the expense of others,” Hayes said.
“They may not get much more than that, but Trump and now the entire Republican Party and most of the conservative movement realize that is enough for them.”
Hayes said Trump supporters care more for a target to rage against than any policy issue.
“They realize that no one actually cared about deficits or small government. That was never the fuel that fired the engine of Republican politics,” he said.
“It was always roiling rage against them that was on full display in the ‘send her back’ chants last night.
“Without that rage and that passion, that enthusiasm and fire in that room, this entire project falls apart. That sentiment at the core of the coalition cannot be pried loose, and it could not be negotiated with, and it cannot be appeased.”
Hayes said the spirit motivating Trump supporters cannot be allowed to keep existing.
“It must be peacefully, nonviolently, politically destroyed with love, compassion and determination, but utterly confronted and destroyed. That is the only way to break the coalition apart. Not by prying off this or that interest. They are in too deep. They have shamed themselves too much,” he said.
“The heart of the thing must be ripped out. The darkness must be banished. The people who feel moral revulsion at that display we saw last night must collectively mobilize in greater numbers than the chanters.”
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