‘Heads on Pikes!’ Maddow Slams Trump for Targeting Political Enemies — POTUS Wants to ‘Make It Illegal or Terrifying’ to Oppose Him

SHARPTON: “Trump is on a retribution tour. Just last week, his Justice Department brought charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James, I just mentioned, for alleged mortgage fraud. Each month, each indicted — he indicted FBI Director James Comey. The list of other potential targets is long, including some of his own former advisers like John Bolton and elected Democrats like Congressman Adam Schiff, just to name a few. If he continues down this list with these charges, how does this end?”
MADDOW: “I’d turn it back around, actually. I’m interested to know your answer to this, Rev, because, I mean, you’ve seen government retribution in action in a lot of different ways over the course of your career. And so I’m interested to hear what you say. I mean, I — I think that the most obvious answer is probably the real one, which is that they want to make it either illegal or terrifying to oppose him. And so they’re putting heads on pikes and putting those pikes up at the edge of the — you know, at the gates to the city to say that it’s not possible to criticize, let alone oppose, this president. ‘If you do, look what we’re going to do to you and your family and your career and your livelihood and your reputation.’ And I think that’s all it is. And I think that they don’t have anybody holding them back, and so they’re going to do it as long as they can and as much as they can. What do you think?”
SHARPTON: “No, I agree. I think they will do it as long as they can, until they realize that it backfires and they’re really creating martyrs. I think that they will end up making people like Tish James and others much more powerful and influential than they thought they were, because every time I’ve seen them do this in the past, me growing up in the Civil Rights Movement, they ended up making people more significant than they thought they were reducing. But it cost people do it. It’s not a walk through the garden for those that are targeted. And I’ve been there. It’s something you have to be strong enough and, as Tish James said, fearless. But you have to know at the end of it, it’s going to end up helping the cause that that you stand for.”
MADDOW: “Yeah. I was struck by the fact that I don’t — and I saw this headline about this. I haven’t looked into it myself, but I have seen it reported that Tish James had never had a fundraising day in her life in public office like she did when when Trump indicted her.”
SHARPTON: “No, she’s — and she’s never been a great fundraiser. She’s a great vote getter, a great leader. But that’s what happens. He’s going to end up being the best thing that happened to some people, [inaudible] wrong people.”
MADDOW: “It’s going to be a unifying thing, too, because I think that even people who are soft supporters of Trump, who may like some things that he’s doing and not others, it’s so obvious that this is not the way the American rule of law is supposed to function. This is not the way the U.S. justice system is supposed to work. Anybody who sees all these U.S. Attorneys firing — getting fired and resigning and stepping out, having to bring in some insurance lawyer from the mid-level ranks of the White House, who’s never prosecuted a case before, to learn on the job about how to bring an indictment, I mean, I think any adult who understands about how the American rule of law works knows that this is wrong. And I think that this will cost him soft support, even if his fanatical supporters would follow him into hell.”