Demented MSNBC Rant: Sociopathic GOP ‘Comfortable with Death,’ ‘Kidnapping’ Kids

MSNBC’s The ReidOut

8/5/2021

7:22 p.m. Eastern

JOY REID: I’m joined now by Mary Trump, author of The Reckoning: America’s Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal. I have the book here. Mary, thank you so much for being here. I always love talking to you because you’re just always so blunt and honest, and I love a blunt sister. I love it when a lady is blunt. You talk about fascism in the book, and it’s something that Mehdi Hasan has talked about, it’s something Chris Hayes, I’ve talked about it, and we normally get slammed for using the word fascism.

But, to your point, this is what David Frum wrote in “The Atlantic” recently. He said: “There’s a word for what Trumpism is becoming. Two traits of historically marked-off European-style fascism for more homegrown American traditions of illiberalism, contempt of legality and the cult of violence. Presidential era Trumpism operated through at least the forms of law. Presidential era Trumpism glorified military power, not mob attacks, on government institutions. Post-presidentially, these past inhibitions are fast dissolving.” Do you believe that your uncle is a fascist and that his party, the Republican Party, is now a fascist party?

MARY TRUMP: There’s no doubt about it, and we need to be very clear about that. Part of the problem —part of the reason we got here is that we have never — and, by we, I really do mean the majority of the white Americans, honestly, because the failure to hold powerful men account — white men accountable and white supremacy go hand in hand from the beginning of our history.

So we need to be very clear with our language, because everything really is at stake, and by dancing around it, by being polite, people aren’t going to understand that, and I’m afraid the Democratic Party doesn’t quite understand that because this is nothing new. One of the reasons we’re here is because we have never faced the fact that there have been fascistic tendencies in this country since the beginning. The Jim Crow South was a closed fascist state, while America was pretending to be the beacon of democracy for the rest of the world.

REID: That is actually absolutely true, and I wonder if you think that part of the issue here is that, even when confronted with sort of mass death, you know, really at the hands, because of Donald Trump — I mean, he was literally willing to let 500, 600, 700, maybe a million people, 1,000 people, die right because of COVID, because all that mattered to him were his own pecuniary interests. Why do you suppose that mass death didn’t break the connection between the people in that party and your uncle?

TRUMP: I think part of it is because he made them feel that they were so superior that they would be immune to it. That’s only part of the explanation, though, because a lot of people who had loved ones die from COVID still think it’s a hoax,

REID: Yeah.

TRUMP: Or still think that they’re going to be immune from it somehow. In fact, I think part of it is something that Ruth Ben-Ghiat mentioned, which is that, over time, people on the right have gotten more comfortable with death. In other words, the value of human life has lessened, and one of the very important reasons for that is the gun culture too. So, it’s all kind of wrapped up together. And it’s going to be really difficult to turn that around as well.

REID: Right, and I think because that is sort of one of the elements of fascism, right, is the idea that, if the right people are dying, it doesn’t matter. You wrote this in this — in this book. You wrote: “COVID is directly affecting every single person on the planet, creating an even greater opportunity to unite us around this common cause. Imagine if Donald’s administration had led a global response to COVID. A real leader would have said, I don’t care about politics or my reelection. A mission — my mission is to do everything in my power to save lives. But Donald and his henchmen couldn’t even see their way to getting help to states that didn’t kiss Donald’s ass sufficiently.”

You know, I have taken a lot of heat for having said back in September that, if Donald Trump remained president, I wouldn’t trust anything that was coming out in terms of vaccines that he was offering, and that it was difficult to trust the CDC after he had warped it so thoroughly, and that, if he became — even if he wasn’t president, it would be difficult to restore that kind of trust, but I said that because, in my mind, a psychopath was president. And if a psychopath is telling you, this vaccine, which is really for my reelection, is what you should take, there’s a good reason not to trust that.

But now there’s not a psychopath in the White House. Do you — do you think that there’s some way to shift kind of the attitudes of people who are just hesitant, based on the fact that, look, guys, there’s not a madman there now, you should really think about it? Do you know how do we even get to that conversation?

TRUMP: Well, I think the Delta variant is doing a lot of the work for us.

REID: True.

TRUMP: And worse variants coming down the pike are going to continue to do that as well, unfortunately, at the cost of more — it’s needless human death, including many, many children who are now getting sick and dying. But it’s complicated by the fact that the right is very good at mirroring the left’s strategies. We rightly call them fascists. They erroneously and falsely call us Marxist, communist socialists, whatever that means. We rightly say I am skeptical that a mass murderer can be trusted when it comes to a vaccine because he’s likely to , you know, just say it’s effective to gain voters, right, whereas now we rightly say you can trust the government in this instance. So it’s — we’re in a bit of a bind, shall we say.

REID: Yeah. You can trust the government when it’s in the hands of someone sane. I think that’s the point, and it’s hard, I guess, to make that point any way subtly. You write this about the big lie. Let’s talk about this, because this is the thing that is now posing a national security threat to this country. That’s what Christopher Wray, the FBI director, has said.

And you write about the big lie. You said: “When your motive is not simply winning at all costs, but grievance and revenge, you’re more dangerous than a straight-up sociopath. Donald is much worse than that. He’s someone with a gaping wound where his soul should be.” Do you believe that your uncle is a psychopath?

TRUMP: I haven’t read the book in a while, so I’m a little surprised at how I really did not pull my punches.

REID: You did not. You never do.

TRUMP: Yeah, that’s — that’s—that’s pretty harsh but true. Is he a sociopath? I don’t think it matters. He’s somebody who’s directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of Americans’ death — American deaths. He’s somebody who’s directly responsible for the kidnapping and incarceration in concentration camps of children. He’s somebody who was willing and continues to be willing to end the American experiment so he can stay in power, and he can avoid accountability, which is so necessary.

The truth is great. Historical truth is very important, but without accountability, that’s how we get here. In fact, I believe it was Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Rights Initiative — sorry — Equal Justice Initiative who said, the North won the war, but the South won the narrative, and that’s one of the very most important reasons we are where we are today.

REID: Yeah. I have to ask this question. It is sort of an elephant in the room. You were on The View the other day. And it occurred to me — we were talking about this in the meeting — the fact that Ms. McCain, Meghan McCain, did not show up for the meeting. I was with Sunny, actually, in Mexico shortly before that. So, I know she wasn’t even super — feeling super well, but she did show up and she was there. Meghan McCain was not.

Are you concerned that the people who style themselves as normal Republicans, as sort of old-time Republicans, and not Trumpist Republicans are still as resistant to confronting the truths that you’re putting forward as the MAGA Republicans? So they’re not willing to even have that conversation with you. Does that concern you that the people who most need to hear and, in theory, would be the most reasonably open to your arguments, will still not discuss it because of partisanship?

TRUMP: It concerns me greatly, but I’d also add quickly that Democrats are going to have a problem facing these truths as well, some of them.

REID: Yeah. It’s going to be tough going forward, but it’s great to have you as a truth-teller willing to speak out. This is the book. I will hold it up again. Everyone, please get a copy of it. It is called The Reckoning. Mary Trump, thank you, as always.

TRUMP: Thank you so much, Joy.