Chris Hayes has been fairly positive about what it means that Donald Trump was found guilt on all 34 counts in his New York fraud trial on Thursday. But on Friday’s episode of “All In,” the MSNBC host expressed serious concerns about the way Republicans have responded to the verdict, warning that Trump is enforcing “totalitarian unanimity,” proving that the GOP will stand by him “no matter what he does.
You can watch the clip now at the top of the page.
“In some ways, the most revealing moment. I mean, all the reaction to Donald Trump’s conviction yesterday, which really flew under the radar was an exchange online between one moderate republican and a Trump campaign worker” Hayes said. He was referring to Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland, now running for a U.S. Senate seat in his otherwise extremely blue state.
Just before the verdict was announced Thursday afternoon, as Hayes explained, Hogan posted a plea on social media, “regardless of the result, I urge all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process.” Moments later, senior Trump adviser Chris LaCivita replied to him, “you just ended your campaign.”
“‘You, Republican governor who dared to speak the very basic American tenant before a verdict, ‘we should respect the legal process,’ you are done,” Hayes summarized, adding that it “was just part of the sort of mob style pressure campaign on Republicans to stand behind the felony convicted candidate.”
Hayes then showed several examples of this campaign, starting with Laura Ingraham on Fox News criticizing various Republicans including Mitch McConnell for not speaking out — which led McConnell to issue a statement condemning the verdict.
“This enforcement operation is happening because the Trump people and the Fox people and most of the people in the upper echelons of the party understand, the only way to really bring Trump down, to end his political career is if Republicans turn against him,” Hayes argued. “As long as they stay unified, no matter what he does, no matter how abhorrent or how dangerous or how criminal or how vile, no matter how much of a threat he is to the nation, if they all band together, then in a polarized landscape, they can basically keep him afloat and make it essentially a coin toss.”
“That is why they dressed up like him during the trial, the rush to debase themselves in cringe inducing fashion on any live TV camera they can find,” Hayes said, before rolling multiple clips of the debasement in question from multiple GOP figures.
Hayes then identified only two instances “where that dynamic of Republican unanimity was broken, where Trump was near political death.” One of them, he explained, came after the Jan. 6 attack, when even staunch lickspittles like Lindsay Graham and Kevin McCarthy were speaking out against Trump.
“Remember that Trump’s approval rating dropped below 40%, struck the lowest level of reached, Mitch McConnell was testing the waters for a vote for an impeachment conviction,” Hayes recalled. “If it had not been for that man, Mitch McConnell, his abject, enduring, pathetic cowardice and McCarthy’s relentless quest to have the third shortest speakership in history — not to mention the legitimate fear Republican senators had for their families about violence — we wouldn’t have this issue now.”
“They could have just voted to convict them and bar him from office again,” Hayes noted.
Hayes then explained that the other instance in which Trump almost lost the GOP came after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape.
“Just about every elected Republican tried to distance themselves and criticize,” Hayes continued, noting that according to multiple reports at the time, the Republican National Committee was even considering if it would be possible to remove Trump as their nominee.
“But Trump managed to hold things together, due in no small part to the fact that right at that moment, he got a guy named Michael Cohen, his lawyer to pay to keep the porn star from talking,” Hayes said. “And so the Republicans never heard about that story, nor did the public, which could have been the political death blow. The lesson he learned is, if you enforce this totalitarian unanimity, you can keep chugging along. It’s a wildly dangerous lesson. Because they will do this no matter what he does. And no matter how bad it gets.”
As we said, watch the clip at the top of the page.
