MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow worried early Friday morning that Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention could serve as a “gateway drug” for turning the Republican Party into one that puts white supremacists into the mainstream.
Her comments were made in reference to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke’s reported praise for Trump’s speech Thursday evening.
“Great Trump Speech, America First! Stop Wars! Defeat the Corrupt elites! Protect our Borders!, Fair Trade! Couldn’t have said it better!” said Duke’s alleged Twitter account.
Maddow was not happy with Trump’s speech or Duke’s alleged tweet.
“[A] lot of people who are critical of Donald Trump generally look at praise like that from someone like David Duke and wonder if he’s a gateway drug, if there is something beyond Donald Trump himself, that means a much greater transformation of the Republican Party into something that is going to be new to mainstream politics,” she said.
MSNBC political contributor Steve Schmidt didn’t quite agree.
“Look, David Duke is a disgusting figure. He’s a racist, a bigot, he’s a cancer on the body politics and he’s expressing himself as he has a First Amendment right to do, but I don’t think that that has anything to do with Donald Trump, but I don’t think you can hold him —” he started to say.
“But there’s a pattern of people on the really, really, really far right — the racist right saying that Trump’s giving the world more room for their views,” Maddow interjected.
Schmidt responded, “I think Donald Trump would be well-served to repudiate all the racists and bigots on the periphery of his campaign. It’s something he should do and he should do it soon and he should make it crystal clear.”
This isn’t the first time that Maddow has worried about the resurgence of nationalist radicals on the far right.
She revealed this month in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine that she has been able to contextualize Trump’s presidential candidacy by studying Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.
“Over the past year, I’ve been reading a lot about what it was like when Hitler first became chancellor,” she said. “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.”
She said all this after her interviewer asked if she’s worried America has wandered into the opening chapter of some “dystopian science fiction novel.”
