MSNBC host Chris Hayes used striking language during the opening monologue of his Monday show to address President Trump’s rhetoric and what he believes are its effects.
“And what is the it I’m speaking of? Well, to quote a phrase, ‘you know it and I know it.’ It’s the well of evil from which our president draws and has drawn from the first day when he said Mexico was sending rapists to the U.S., presumably with the explicit intent to defile America’s women,” Hayes said. “The dark sorcery of racial hatred that conjures invasions and infestations out of desperate fellow human beings seeking refuge.”
“Hatred echoed in the refrain of death squads and war criminals and fascist mobs throughout history as they wield the club and the pistol and the machete. ‘You’re invaders. You are animals. You are a disease. You are a threat to us and you will not replace us,'” he continued, showing video of “Unite the Right” attendees chanting “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The video then cut to Trump’s press conference after the August 2017 Charlottesville rally, during which he said there were “fine people on both sides.”
Trump’s language, Hayes said, “is why, of course, that there is a body count. That there is blood on the ground. That there is a list of names waiting now to be carved into headstones.”
The host pointed to how political violence “can and has come and we should be clear about this in many forms and from many ideologies. There have been leftist bouts of terror and religious fanatics and nihilistic maniacs.”
