“Morning Joe” guest commentator Jon Meacham suggested that Trump voters enjoy the thought of him in the Oval Office again because they are entertained by his controversial behavior.
“For the rest of us — the question is, are the people who are committed to voting for Donald Trump — again for the third time — are they affected by any of this?” Meacham said Friday. “My own bet is no. This is something they have decided they are willing to put up with.”
Meacham’s remarks came as the MSNBC panel was discussing Trump’s third day in court for his hush money trial and all the events that have taken place in the media since it began, including him throwing shots at Judge Juan M. Merchan’s daughter and his parading a stack of news stories that lean in his favor.
“When you take a step back and think just this week, a president who is sitting in a courtroom over a hush money payment to a porn star, we’re talking about hypotheticals at the Supreme Court, his attorneys of whether or not he could use Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political opponent, when you think about the indictments that came down two days ago in Arizona where people on his behalf appointed themselves as fake electors and tried to overturn the results of the election,” host Willie Geist said. “You do have to take a step back sometimes and just digest how unprecedented, how extraordinary it is to see one man, one president having allegedly done all this.”
In response, Meacham compared Trump’s antics to the popular zombie drama “The Walking Dead,” adding that the topic at hand is pointing out what powers does a president hold that would allow Trump to evade being legally prosecuted.
“It’s like ‘The Walking Dead,’ the C-SPAN version,” he said. “It’s just this crazy land of things. It is hard to keep it all straight. Politically, constitutionally, the most important thing that unfolded was the Supreme Court yesterday, trying to figure out what are the powers, what’s the limit of the authority of the Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States, and that’s a vastly important question.”
At the end of the day, Meacham said Trump’s fans, followers and especially his voters are intrigued by the former “Apprentice” star, and the average American seemingly doesn’t care about more serious issues going on in the country.
“The hard truth about the American character at the moment is, people kind of like this. Let’s just be honest. This is more entertaining than trying to figure out what to do about the manufacturing of computer chips or dealing with the complexities of the Middle East or collective security in Europe,” Meacham said. “Those are hard things and if the country really wanted to focus on, guess what, that’s what they would focus on. Trump is fundamentally an entertainer. That’s where he started. The test we’re facing — and I was thinking about this all day yesterday — the test we’re facing as citizens, do we want a reality show or do we want reality? Do we want to govern our affairs in a less vivid but certainly more serious way?”
