Rachel Maddow highlights Republicans' embrace of antisemitism
Published
Citation From the September 20, 2024, edition of MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show
RACHEL MADDOW (HOST): All in the space of a few days, we've got Trump saying, twice, 'If I lose the election, blame the Jews.' Within a day of that, we also get the release of an interview that his running mate did with an RNC prime-time speaker, former host from the Fox News Channel, who very famously just did a celebratory, laudatory, totally uncritical two hour fan fest interview with a Holocaust denier, in which the two of them talked about how Hitler wasn't the bad guy in World War II. I mean, this is a guy, to be clear, who says we need to be more understanding of the fact that, really, Hitler was just looking for a solution -- in his words -- for, quote, "an acceptable solution to the Jewish problem." That's all he was doing. Why can't we be more understanding of that? He wasn't a bad guy. He was just looking for an acceptable solution to the Jewish problem.
After this former Fox News host and the prime-time RNC speaker interviewed him for two hours and praised him as the best public historian in the country, his own podcast -- the Holocaust denier guy -- went to number one in the country. And the most notorious, like, famous godfathers of Holocaust denial in this country all praised it, right, said they wanted credit. Finally, their words are getting out there. The number one podcast in the country on Apple Podcasts.
On the day the White House had to put out a denunciation of that guy and the fact that an RNC prime-time speaker just did a laudatory two-hour interview praising him -- on the same day the White House had to put out their denunciation of that, J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for vice president, taped an interview with that same RNC speaker and Fox News host, who had just celebrated as America's best public historian, this Holocaust denial guy.
So now that J.D. Vance interview, which was taped at that auspicious time, it's just come out. You know, great timing. Right in time for 'blame the Jews day' from his running mate. In that interview, which again has just come out, J.D. Vance makes the case that we don't really have a democracy in this country. Not we shouldn't have a democracy in the future, he's not making that argument -- although he kind of is. What he's saying is that we don't have a democracy now. And why is it that he thinks we don't have a democracy now? Because he says, there's a secret, powerful group who really controls things behind the scenes. So we should blame them.