Unusually for an MSNBC primetime host, Chris Hayes seemed positively exasperated with the fecklessness of Democratic Party leadership on Thursday and devoted the first segment of “All In” to unusually direct criticism.
After running down some of the latest examples of “an unprecedented assault on our democratic order by Donald Trump and Elon Musk,” the former acting like “a mad king,” Hayes noted that what he mentioned “isn’t even a fraction of the flavor of corruption we’re seeing on display every day. So understandably, lots of people look around, millions of them, I’d say, and say, ‘Where are the Democrats? What are they doing as the opposition party?’ The answer is, not a ton.
Hayes went on to call the Democrats’ apparent strategy of playing it safe not only “morally wrong,” but also “strategically bankrupt,” adding “now is the time for trying something.
Watch the whole commentary below:
Early on, Hayes conceded that Democrats do not control any branch of government. “But it is also true that many elected Democrats are not exactly seizing the moment. A lot of them seem to learn a very weird set of lessons from the defeat in 2024 and are, to my mind, kind of working backwards, trying to fight the last war instead of pivoting to the political reality of the here and now,” he argued.
“We are here now dealing with Donald Trump’s assault on the Constitution and on the country. So it is ridiculous to think that this strategy of playing it safe is the solution to that assault,” Hayes continued, at which point he mocked the over-cautious, conflict-averse, often outright-surrendering way Democratics leaders have acted since November.
“Not every act of defiance against Trump’s anti constitutional power grab needs to take into account what a school voter in Wisconsin is going to think on election day in 2026 or 2028. That’s a lifetime away,” Hayes argued, though he conceded these aren’t entirely unimportant things to consider in some circumstances. Just not the current one.
Hayes at this point noted Congressman Al Green of Texas, who vocally challenged one of Trump’s more incredible lies during his joint congressional speech on Tuesday, for which he was kicked out of the House of Representatives for disruption.
Green, Hayes lamented, “was really the only Democrat who put up that kind of public fight,” noting for his trouble, 10 democrats voted with all Republicans to censure him, and anonymous Democrats complained about him in the press, including one who whined that Green “became the story, not the price of eggs.”
“I’m sorry, but to me, this is just completely misreading the moment. This fight right now, ultimately, isn’t really about the price of eggs. Maybe the politics of price of eggs matter. They do that. That’s fine, that’s right. And maybe what Congressman green did was the right thing, and maybe it was the wrong thing,” Hayes said, noting that Green took his punishment like an adult.
Green’s actions may or may not have been the wrong ones, Hayes said, but “at least Green tried something. Now is the time for trying things. Everyone has an obligation as a citizen to defend this country’s democracy, this shared project we all undertake together by any peaceful and democratic means necessary, because Trump and the MAGA movement are organized right now, and their intentions could not be clearer. The world’s richest man unilaterally controls the purse strings of the federal government. Donald Trump is referring to himself as America’s King.”
“That’s not something like ‘hysterical libs,’” Hayes added. “He calls himself a king. Six week in, they are flirting with prosecuting their political enemies. They have a clear vision of a presidential dictatorship. It’s everyone’s job to resist.”
Hayes then called out what he said was a “weird attempt” by Democratic leaders and commentators “to rewrite the history of the first Trump administration, that the so called ‘resistance’ from back then was a failure, but it wasn’t a failure. There were millions people marching the streets a day after Trump’s inauguration the first time.”
And, Hayes continued, this led to a string of successes, including election victories in 2018 and 2020.
“Somehow, all that has been rewritten as a failure, which in turn has convinced folks they just need to keep their heads down and hope they can run on ‘egg prices’ in two years. Not only is that strategy morally wrong, in my view, but more importantly, for my purposes here, it’s strategically bankrupt,” he said. “Resistance was the right course of action 2017. it’s the right course of action now.”
You can, as we said, watch the full commentary in the video above.
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