The day after Chris Hayes became so frustrated during his interview with Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that he gasped “my god” in disbelief, the MSNBC host devoted the opening segment of his show to rebutting Schumer’s arguments in detail.
Hayes, strongly disagreeing with Schumer, urged Democrats to fight back against “Mad King” Donald Trump urgently, saying “now is the time to break glass” and “now is the time to take political risks before it’s too late.”
At issue is Schumer’s sudden decision last week to break with his party and throw his support to a GOP funding bill in order, so he says, to avoid a government shutdown that would be worse than anything Trump is currently doing, a decision that has caused widespread outrage not only at Schumer and the other Democrats who voted for the bill, but at the party as a whole.
Schumer has since made the rounds defending himself, and as seen on Tuesday’s “All In,” his argument essentially boils down to “now is not the time” to really fight, and that we aren’t yet in any kind of grave constitutional crisis. Schumer also argues that Democrats should focus largely on economics, not the constitution, and wait for Republicans to drop in the polls.
Hayes, obviously, disagreed and urged Democrats instead to “meet the moment.”
Watch the whole MSNBC segment below:
“The movement to resist Donald Trump’s unconstitutional power grab faces two fundamental questions, How bad are things right now? And when is it time to use every possible democratic means to slow his assault?” Hayes began. Referring back to his interview the night before, he said “one of my main takeaways from it is that there’s a fundamental difference between how some people view this moment and how others do. Like some people think we are in a constitutional crisis, that there is a plan in place to impose a dictatorship on this country that is being executed as we speak. And Senator Schumer does not think we are quite there yet.”
Hayes then played a clip from the interview where he argued we are not yet in that crisis, responding, “I genuinely hope that Schumer’s read on this is correct, right? But it makes it very hard to imagine a leader meeting the moment if they don’t believe the moment is here.”
“For me, Donald Trump’s intentions are really very clear at this point. He is in the process of attempting to undo the constitutional republic. His executive branch is in the process of overtaking, of reducing to subserviencet he legislative and judicial branches of the government, Congress and the courts, so that he can act unilaterally. Even within his executive purview, the president is purging anything anyone that falls short of pledging unshakable loyal to him personally and his personal political project, not the United States, not the constitution, and not We the people.”
“Trump is using the vast powers the presidency to hobble his political opponents as well, including bogus investigations into democratic fundraising platforms, threats to shut down nonprofit organizations he sees as oppositional. And it’s not just the government or partisan entities. Trump wants to dismantle all forms of public opposition to his power grab, starting with all sources of independent authority. Any institution with credible credibility must either be bent to trim Trump’s winner and destroyed. That’s the goal here,” Hayes warned.
Hayes also noted how Trump has “repeatedly threatened independent media outlets,” is attacking American higher education, and is “trying to deport a legal residence for his protected political speech. This is it, man, this is trying it. I’m not saying he’s being successful. I’m not saying that. You know all is lost and they’re gonna win and you know, doom and gloom, but they’re trying to do it. They’re trying to get rid of independent voices of authority, purge them, fracture a pluralistic civil society. It’s clear as day to so many of us, including, I will say, scholars of authoritarian regimes, and especially, and this is pretty important, lots of folks who have lived through these regimes.”
Hayes conceded that the concern that many who agree with Schumer seem to have is that “democracy itself right, preserving the constitutional order, is just not a particularly salient political issue, particularly for people that are not super, super paying attention… I think a lot of Democrats in power, political consultants around the Democratic Party have come to conclude that democracy is a losing issue politically, and we should they should talk about Medicaid cuts, for instance, instead.”
Hayes then played a clip of Schumer making the argument for talking about Medicaid and other things Democrats often lump together into so-called “kitchen table issues,” and his argument that the tactics he’s advising now worked in 2017.
Hayes conceded that “Schumer understands political strategy, and he’s right about that history, and he’s right that that type of resistance did work eight years ago, and in many ways, you know that first Trump administration politically was a failure. I mean, it got a huge tax cut to billionaires, surprise, surprise, and corporations. But again, it just when you are paying as close attention as we are here on this program, here at the network, and I think a lot of you watching at home, it just does seem that now is the time for to break class, right? It’s not the time for politics as usual.”
Listing problems including the increasingly unstable economy, Hayes argued that “you don’t have to choose” between talking about economics, or talking about a constitutional crisis. “It’s all one thing. It’s all one thing. The threat to democracy has become so much more tangible than it was when folks went to the ballot four months ago, in part because this entire ‘Mad King’ act is wreaking havoc in every direction. And with that in mind, a lot of leader Schumer’s Democratic colleagues believe it’s time to basically fight back harder.”
“I think now is the time to take political risks before it’s too late,” Hates said shortly after. “To only barely slightly oversimplify the whole point of America is that you cannot have one guy in charge of everything without checks or balances. It is literally the foundational insight, upon which this country was built, no kings, not ever. There is quite possibly, nothing that is more fundamentally American.”
You can, as we noted, watch the whole thing above.
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