MSNBC’s Tiffany Cross is taking the rhetoric coming from many Americans that the country is on the “brink” of civil war very seriously, saying that it feels like “one has already begun.”
On Saturday’s “The Cross Connection,” the MSNBC host was joined by author Barbara F. Walter and Columbia journalism dean Jelani Cobb in a segment called “Democracy in Danger” to ask the question, has America already slipped into a civil war?
“These days, it feels like we are not just at the brink of a civil war, but that one has already begun,” Cross said, kicking off the discussion, illustrating her point by showing clips of Sen. Lindsey Graham predicting “riots in the street” if Donald Trump is prosecuted for “mishandling classified information.” The South Carolina Republican’s comment landed with such force that President Biden mentioned it in his “soul of the nation” address Thursday night.
Cross followed up that clip with one of former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon saying that the FBI had become “the Gestapo,” citing a Vox article that said MAGA was a threat to “the American state.”
“They didn’t say the country, they didn’t say America as a nation, they didn’t say the American people. The American state,” Bannon said. “They are absolutely correct. You said the quiet part out loud. We are a threat to the American state.”
Trump supporters and MAGA are “already speaking the language of violence” all for Donald Trump, Cross said.
“They’re threatening the FBI, the DOJ, the state itself. And this is all as they defend their dear leader,” Cross said. “Now, it’s more than just threats, though. Their rhetoric has already led to actual violence, and there is likely more to come. And I don’t need to remind you how the MAGA mob sacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 in an effort to overturn the 2020 election.”
Some of these people are now candidates for office, Cross noted, people who are “looking to run our elections and, quite frankly, our government. And for those insurrectionists being prosecuted, discount Don, is, quote, financially supporting some of them and offering to pardon the lot if he’s reelected in 2024.”
Cross concluded, “More than 40% of Americans think a civil war is likely in the next decade. That’s a big number. Is this where history will say it began?”
