Studying Adolf Hitler’s rise to power has helped MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow contextualize Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy.
“Over the past year, I’ve been reading a lot about what it was like when Hitler first became chancellor,” she revealed a Rolling Stone magazine interview published this week. “I am gravitating toward moments in history for subliminal reference in terms of cultures that have unexpectedly veered into dark places, because I think that’s possibly where we are.”
Maddow’s remarks came after her interviewer, Andy Greene, asked if she’s worried that America has wandered into the opening chapter of some “dystopian science fiction novel.”
Green also asked Maddow if she was “disappointed” in the United States for “making Trump one of the two major-party nominees for president.”
“I am fascinated in my country! There’s no mystery about Trump,” she said. “I mean, there’s a little mystery as to why he wanted to do this. Have you seen those frustration moments for him on the trail: ‘I had a good life. Why am I doing this?’
“What is amazing is the Republican Party that picked him. They had 330 million people to choose from, and they’ve decided that he is the best one to be the standard-bearer of one of the two major parties of the greatest nation on Earth,” she added.
“Like, talk to me, Republican voters! What’s the worst-case scenario for America if he wins? It can be pretty bad. You don’t have to go back far in history to get to almost apocalyptic scenarios.”
Trump currently polls about 5 percentage points behind Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average.
Eight out of the nine most recent national polls show Clinton handily beating the presumptive GOP candidate.
