Irony Overload: Liberals Cry “Trump Tyranny” While Ignoring Their Own Actions

Video and Transcript from Glenn Greenwald:

All right, let me quickly show you, because I’ve been talking a little bit about the desperation of liberal discourse and the like and how the more liberals start seeing things like this, they start panicking and really start getting extremely desperate. So, first let me show you an interview that Rachel Maddow gave to CNN’s Oliver Darcy, the media reporter. I’m sure we can imagine how adversarial that interview was, where CNN’s Oliver Darcy interviewed MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

Here is part of the exchange that they had.

Oliver Darcy: Trump and his allies are openly talking about weaponizing the government to seek revenge against critics in media and politics, with some of his extremist allies even talking about jailing their fellow Americans.

I absolutely love the irony where liberals say, oh, we have to prevent Trump from getting into office because if he does, he’s going to use the Justice Department to prosecute, criminalize and imprison his critics, when that is all liberals have been trying to do to Trump for the last three years. Trump was president for four years and never once did that. The difference, though, is he didn’t do it, Democrats are actually doing it. And then, the Oliver Darcy goes on and says:

Oliver Darcy: You’re one of his most notable critics on television. Are you worried that you could be a target?

Rachel Maddow: I’m worried about the country broadly if we put someone in power who is openly avowing that he plans to build camps to hold millions of people, and to “root out” what he’s described in subhuman terms as his “enemy from within.” Again, history is helpful here. He’s not joking when he says this stuff, and we’ve seen what happens when people take power proclaiming that kind of agenda.

I think there’s a little bit of head-in-the-sand complacency that Trump only intends to go after individual people he has already singled out. Do you really think he plans to stop at well-known liberals?

For that matter, what convinces you that these massive camps he’s planning are only for migrants? So, yes, I’m worried about me — but only as much as I’m worried about all of us. (CNN, Oliver Darcy, June 10, 2024)

So, she’s basically saying: I’m one of the most notable people on television who criticizes Trump and even though he had already had four years in office where he didn’t do a single thing like any of this – he didn’t build concentration camps or gas chambers; he didn’t round up his critics and put them in prison; he didn’t close newsrooms – now suddenly they say, “No, this time he’s really going to do it.”

They were saying these things all before the 2016 election as well. I think it’s very difficult to convince Americans that Trump is a Hitler figure when he was actually just president four years ago and I don’t think Americans got the impression that he was doing things that made Hitler, Hitler.

If you think what Rachel Maddow was saying – that she’s going to be sent to a camp – was deranged, I need you to listen to what Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said yesterday as well, when speaking to Kara Swisher. And listen not only to her words, but also the tone of voice she’s employing when saying these things.

(Audio. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Kara Swisher. June 10, 2024)

Kara Swisher: What happens to you if Donald Trump wins? What do you do? What’s your first […]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: I mean, it sounds nuts, but like, I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy threw me in jail.

Kara Swisher: Really?

“I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy threw me in jail.” That was her first answer when she was asked, as a congressman, what’s the first thing you would do? And she said, look, I’m probably gonna end up in jail. This guy’s going to throw me in jail. That’s how important I am and that’s how dissident I am. I’m such a threat to establishment power that Trump intends to put me – me, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – who’s basically a glorified social media influencer, into a gulag, a concentration camp. Listen to the rest.

 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: He’s out of his mind. I mean, he did his whole first campaign around “lock her up” like this was his motto.

Kara Swisher: But he didn’t say that. You know, he said he didn’t say that

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Right? I take him at his word. I take him at his word. I take him at his word when he says that he’s going to round up people. I take him at his word when he threatens journalists. I take him at his word. I feel like what we saw in his first presidency was an amuse-bouche to what his intentions are. He has learned from his mistakes of appointing professionals, and he will not make that mistake next time […]

Amazing that AOC is now saying, oh, in his first term he appointed professionals. Do you think that was what they were saying about Trump’s team during that first term in office?

Anyway, it’s not even just the utter narcissism and inflated self-importance that Trump is coming to put Rachel Maddow and AOC into concentration camps because they’re such grave threats, such brave dissidents, I think they really believe it. It’s like a kind of hysteria that they’ve been feeding on.

Remember, these people only talk to each other and for each other. They only listen to the same media outlets that repeat all the same things. It’s kind of not just a group think or her behavior, it’s like a cult where you have this message indoctrinated, drummed into your head, every day, by your colleagues, by the media, by everyone who can provide you with positive rewards or negative rewards that Trump really is this Hitler figure that they start to believe in, even though he was just president four years ago and absolutely none of this happened. He did not put anybody in prison who were his political enemies. These are the people who are trying to put their political enemies into prison, and they’ve been doing it going all the way back to Trump’s candidacy, to his campaign and then to his presidency here. Look at all the people who almost ended up in jail. Michael Flynn, Trump’s incoming national security adviser, almost ended up in prison. He was charged and pleaded guilty because he picked up a phone and reached out to his counterpart in the Russian government to try to smooth over relations, exactly what you would expect them to do in the transition. They’ve been wanting the imprisonment of their political enemies, and they’re getting the imprisonment of their political enemies for years, while at the same time they’re projecting onto Trump what they themselves are doing. I suppose if you’re somebody who really craves the imprisonment of your own political opponents, maybe, I guess you just automatically assume that that’s how everybody else thinks as well.

Now, let me just give you this kind of amazing contrast to make this point that I want to underscore. Again, this is where you get a sense of how unhinged, how demented these people are, how maniacal they are, and the kinds of hysterical claims that they’re trying to make, knowing that they’re seeing the same poll numbers as we just showed you. Nothing is working and so they’re getting out of their minds.

At the end of April, just a couple of months ago, the former Bush-Cheney spokeswoman, Nicole Wallace, who is now a very popular liberal host on MSNBC that has its own interesting dynamic buried within it, but Nicolle Wallace went on the air and while she didn’t say she expects Trump to put her in a concentration camp the way AOC and Rachel Maddow did, this is something that, seemingly on the verge of tears, she was so worried about that she warned her audience what might likely happen if Trump were elected. Listen to this.

(Video. Nicolle Wallace. April 29, 2024)

Nicolle Wallace: I’ve seen that toast a bunch of times, but it landed very differently this year because depending on what happens in November, seven months from right now, this time next year, I might not be sitting here. There might not be a White House Correspondents Dinner or free press while our democracy exactly falls apart immediately without it. The real threat looms larger. A candidate with outward disdain, not just for a free press, but for all of our freedoms and the rule of law itself.

First of all, I think it’s so funny that in trying to warn people of just how evil and extreme and dangerous Trump is, she said there might not even be a White House Correspondents Dinner. That thing where they all dress up in gowns and pretend that they’re at the Oscars and they get to go to the White House. But she is, again, saying, like, I think Trump’s going to take me off the air like he’s just going to order me off the air. And the reason why I just find that so interesting is because I want you to hear the glee and the joy to the point where Nicolle Wallace was almost cackling in August of 2023 when she talked about how Trump was not only on his way to jail but was being put into one of the most dangerous prisons in the entire country where people have been murdered before, and how gleeful and happy she was. In other words, she’s the one who wants to put her political enemies in jail, and I’m going to just leave to the side everything the Bush and Cheney administration did to destroy civil liberties while she was there defending it. Listen to what she said back in 2023, when Trump was on his way to a Georgia jail.

(Video. Nicolle Wallace. August 24, 2023)

Nicolle Wallace: Just a few minutes ago, Donald Trump, the disgraced ex-president, the front runner for the Republican nominee for president four times indicted, departed his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. He’s en route to Fulton County, Georgia. At Newark Airport, we believe he will surrender himself for processing at an overcrowded jail with a reputation for violence and neglect, a jail that is accustomed to holding defendants facing charges up to and including violent crimes. Stabbings are frequent. Actually, three people have lost their lives over the last month. That jail is where the disgraced ex-president of the United States is heading right now.

I mean, do you see that? Who talks about prison that way? She’s so excited. Trump’s not just going to prison, but he’s going to a prison that’s one of the worst, most repressive, most dangerous prisons where people get raped and murdered. She’s the one who wants to put her political enemies in prison.

And she and this crowd are doing that very well. They have nothing to run on. They are behind the candidate. His brain is melting and everyone can see it. They are really spiraling out of control. And we’re only in June. Imagine what they’re going to be doing in July, August and September if these polling numbers stay the same or even get worse. I just think it’s so important to take a step back and realize sometimes – probably most of you don’t watch these shows, they’re only speaking to like-minded people anyway – but I think it’s important to note these are some of the world’s largest media corporation, NBC News here, and then CNN, how genuinely detached these people are from reality. Not just how partisan they are, but how hysterical they are. They’re spreading a kind of paranoia and sickness into the American body politic out of their desperation that Trump might win. That is really disturbing, not just politically, but psychologically and emotionally.