Rachel Maddow Says ‘Hysterical Doomsdayers’ Were Right About Trump 2nd Term: ‘They Are Consolidating Power’ | Video

Stephen Colbert kicked off Tuesday night’s episode “The Late Show” with his first guest, famed political correspondent Rachel Maddow, and asked one question that encapsulated Trump’s second term: “What the F–k?!”

After he congratulated the “Rachel Maddow Show” host on working every weeknight to cover the first 100 days of Trump’s second term on MSNBC, Colbert then asked what the coverage has taught her about his second term and what the playbook for Trump’s new administration is.

“So, the common wisdom when Trump was coming back for a second term was he would have worked out all the kinks in the first term, that maybe he had some really radical intentions for the country in the first term but he was not really good at doing anything and so we didn’t have to deal with the worst of it,” Maddow explained. “The common wisdom is he’ll be better at it this time around. Not true! Turns out, there was no learning about how to do the stuff.”

Colbert then pointed out that a big problem with authoritarianism is that it all falls to one person, referencing growing unease with the Trump administration’s tendency to skirt long-established processes – like outright ignoring orders from the judicial branch.

“The personalization of government means you are depending on the personal competence of the guy in charge,” Maddow said in agreement, adding that it was a “limiting factor in terms of what can happen in an authoritarian government.” 

The MSNBC host then went on to explain that the main difference she has noticed in terms of the public response this time around has been through protesting. Maddow pointed out that during his first term there was the Women’s March in the days after he first got elected; this time, however, protesting has taken a more consistent form.

“There was not one huge protest. But in Trump’s first 100 days this time, people protest in, I swear, like all 50 states every day – and it never stops,” Maddow said. “I mean, every day I’m covering protests in Tuscaloosa and Boise and Lima, Ohio. I have to watch local news clips to figure out how to pronounce the name of the town where there is the demonstration.”

Maddow also commented on how the nationwide pushback has started to largely affect Republican members of Congress, who are getting yelled at when they go out in their own congressional districts. She explained that this was not just happening with Democrats but in historically conservative areas where people have been surprised about cuts to government programs like Social Security and mass layoffs from government agencies at the hands of Elon Musk’s DOGE.

“Even if you are in Republican plus 30 districts, where Democrats have not won an election in living memory, but still there’s enough angry people, Democrats, Independents and Republicans in every congressional district in the country that Republicans now just are not showing their faces because they can’t take it,” Maddow said. “That’s what happens when you cut Meals on Wheels, when you cut Head Start, you mess with Social Security. You do all this stuff, you are never going to survive politically.” 

Later in the interview, Colbert said that he was concerned that the amount of incompetence and disregard GOP Congress members seem to have for their constituencies – and that it seems like officials were not worried about answering to voters during midterms. There’s been growing unease over President Trump refusal to deny the possibility of a third term and a recent “Meet the Press” interview earlier this week where he said he didn’t know if he had to uphold the Constitution. 

“The people who warned us about how bad this was going to be. The people who were really hysterical, like the doomsayers, they were all right,” Maddow said. “What we are experiencing is not just someone fighting against the democratic party, he’s fighting against the democratic process. He doesn’t think there should be elections and they are consolidating power.” 

She continued: “They are disempowering Congress, ignoring Congress, defunding agencies or closing agencies, that’s Congress’ job, that’s not the president’s job. When they are defying court orders, that’s them saying the courts don’t have authority over the president. That’s consolidating all the power with one man, that’s authoritarianism, and that’s what you do when you don’t want to have an election because you want to stay in power for life.” 

Maddow did close out on a bit of a hopeful note, saying that although things are bad, the Trump administration’s continued disregard for the rules have started to anger the public.

“There has never been in the history of this country an American president who had been this unpopular at 100 days in,” Maddow said. “The American public understands. They are just saying ‘No, No, No!’”

You can watch “The Late Show” clip in the video above.

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