Anand Giridharadas: John Kelly Calling Trump a Fascist ‘Is the Opposite of Gaslighting’

SCARBOROUGH: “… Anand, that at some point there would be one thing, and it seems like it would be a pretty good line in the sand to draw, that Republicans wouldn’t reflexively defend him, and yet if you were watching another network last night, well, you’re watching CNN, you actually heard a Republican, former congressman, defending Donald Trump by saying — again, it’s this — this false equivalency that we’ve been talking about in the media for a very long time, this one takes the cake, where you say, ‘Oh, you don’t know about context to this,’ and also there are a lot of, his words, a lot of Hitlers running around college campuses. I’m not aware of any staff member, any professor, any administrator that’s killed six million Jews, or started a war that killed, what, 150, 200 million people. Again, it’s the grotesque, the grotesque fawning and rationalizing for a man who is promising in his words to be an autocrat, you know, to arrest, to arrest — I’m sorry, to arrest, it’s really just hard to grasp that, and promising every day to arrest his political opponents, every day to arrest his political opponents, with the military. Again, it’s just hard to grasp, and yet Republicans continue to go along for the ride.”
Giridharadas: “Yeah, you know, I think one of the features of — distinctive features of the United States, compared to other countries, is that we don’t necessarily think always in historical terms. We’re a country that lives in the present, thinks a lot about the future, a lot of other countries are obsessed with their past, but one — when I was growing up, one element of history that all Americans, including children, quote repeatedly, is kind of Hitler bad, right? If Americans don’t know anything else about history, Hitler bad is a pretty universal article of faith. That message has really broken through, even Americans who are not interested in history don’t read history books, Hitler bad, very well firmly established foundation of the American mind. And so now a former American president trying to be an American president again, is trying to run on Hitler good. I think what John Kelly did, with Mike’s admirable reporting, only he could do this, is the opposite of gaslighting, right? Because John Kelly is not the first person to call Donald Trump a fascist. It’s been said many times on this show, it’s been said on other shows, it’s been said by many courageous writers, it’s been said by some people going back years, but when it’s the former chief of staff to that person, when it’s someone with that kind of military record that the admiral described, when it’s not an activist on campus, when it’s someone who chose after that career in the military to work for Donald Trump and try to implement his plans with whatever discomfort he harbored all along, it should be taken seriously, it should be a validation of some of the things other people have been saying, and it should be a reminder, I think particularly to those people who are most stubbornly in this kind of fascist camp right now, or are fascist curious, that if a person with John Kelly’s mind and training and history of service and up-close proximity to Donald Trump is saying he is a fascist, he is an authoritarian, he has serious vision around this, and he loves himself some Hitler, he thinks Hitler good, that should be taken seriously by maybe people who won’t take me seriously, or activists seriously, or anybody else, take John Kelly seriously if you don’t take us seriously.”
BRZEZINSKI: “Right.”