Making clear that they would be spewing endless venom toward the people House Speaker Nancy Pelsoi deemed “enemies of the state,” MSNBC opened its Monday coverage of the RNC with disdain, fear, and somberness. Worst of all, co-host Joy Reid feared that the RNC was a sign the Trumps believe they are America’s true monarchy and the President will follow in the footsteps of Russian President Vladimir Putin in staying in office 12 more years.
“Tonight is night one of what is not actually, technically the Republican National Convention. The Republican Party and the White House had a number of false starts in planning for this convention,” co-host Rachel Maddow began, setting the tone before going through attempts to host a traditional RNC (or as close as they could make it) in Charlotte and Jacksonville.
Maddow then laid the groundwork for one of the reasons why MSNBC wouldn’t be airing the RNC. Her reason? Well, the roll call votes were held Monday afternoon, so there was little reason to see it as anything more than a waste (click “expand”):
Now, that low-key, daytime event is over. That was the Republican convention. What we're going to see in Washington, D.C. tonight over the next four nights is something that they will call the convention but technically it’s something different. It will look a little like a convention, at least a little like what the Democrats did, but it’s not put on by the convention committee. It won’t do any convention business. It’s basically a campaign show, a pageant organized by the Trump campaign itself and by the Republican National Committee.
To underscore how weird this is, I should tell you the Republicans are also just skipping the whole party platform thing. The statement about what they stand for, what they're running on, they're not doing that. At party conventions every four years, the parties typically draft and vote on a new party platform. Republicans this year announced they won't do that this year. They won't have a platform. Instead, they have passed a resolution saying they intend to reassert their strong support for President Donald Trump and his administration and that's pretty much it. [SIGHS]
Maddow spent the next few minutes reveling in news that New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) had taken legal action against the Trump Organization and “ask[ed] a court to compel the President's son Eric to testify and to force the President's business to comply with multiple subpoenas.”
After teasing an interview with James Comey, Maddow boasted to Reid and Wallace: “[T]his is going to be a different kind of week than last week, but there’s also so much going on in the news heading into it, including new sort of trouble for the Trump family at a time that they are really showcasing the President's family at this event.”
Wallace asserted that, because Trump plans to appear every night of the convention, he’s on a track to lose the election because it’ll be framed as a referendum on the President.
Meanwhile, the conspiracy theory-obsessed Reid insisted that America’s becoming “a constitutional monarchy” that are unaccountable to the courts and voters. Whereas last week’s focus at the DNC on the Biden and Harris families was about “them as human beings” and losses they’ve experienced, the RNC wants to “create a pageantry about the Trumps.”
No word on what Reid would say about political families from our past, whether you invoke the Adams family, Kennedy clan, Roosevelts, and/or the Obamas.
Reid then went over the edge, taking Trump’s trolling seriously:
Donald Trump came out and said, say, 12 more years. That's exactly what Putin’s given himself, 12 more years. He’s sort of — it’s almost as if the election doesn’t matter anymore because as far as Donald Trump and his family are concerned, they’ve established themselves as monarchs and if they have to keep power the way monarchs do, they’ll do it.
In contrast, below are some snippets of how this trio opened night one of the DNC (click “expand”):
MADDOW: This is the first night of a party convention unlike any other in history. The bottom line of course will be the same. This year’s DNC will culminate in the formal nomination of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for president and vice president, but other than that, everything is different. Despite its name for example, this year’s convention will not actually convene any people. You are looking here at the Wisconsin Center in downtown Milwaukee where the DNC is kind of still being held but instead of being filled to the rafters with delegates and party faithful and the press and balloons and streamers, because of the pandemic, the Wisconsin Center is home tonight only to a broadcast control room which you see here, which will be handling video feeds of speeches being delivered remotely from all over the country. Those speeches tonight will include one from possibly the most popular person in the country, former First Lady Michelle Obama, also the liberal juggernaut Vermont Senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will speak tonight on COVID among other issues. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer will speak, Jim Clyburn from South Carolina, many, many more. Joining us live here in the next hour will be Massachusetts senator and former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren. Our colleague Chris Hayes will be here this hour with his interview with Democratic Party star Stacey Abrams. But this starts at all what should be a week of weird and hopefully fantastic coverage of the Democratic Convention.
(....)
MADDOW: Joy, you are jacked though, I could tell.
REID: I know. I’m trying to contain it. I’m trying to keep it inside.
MADDOW: Why?
REID: Because I love conventions. I mean, I’m a nerd. I’ve been watching since the sixth grade. I think they’re fun. I think they’re fabulous. And look, if SNL can be so good remote, I feel like this is going to be good, right? Remember the national graduation thing? That was amazing. So I’m anticipating that it’s going to be great. And I know that because the Democratic Party more has the culture, you know, I’m just expecting like Cardi B. to walk out. Like, I don’t know what will happen, so I am excited, but I will agree with you. I mean, A, this is the first time I’ve not been in sweatpants and slippers.
WALLACE: Yes, I feel that.
REID: I’m remembering to suck it in because I haven’t had to wear like full outfits of clothes, so that’s fun. I still have on like weird slippers, but I mean it’s -- being around humans is different and it makes it more poignant.
(....)
REID: [T]he Post Office thing has gotten me even more anxiety than I already am prone to. Because if you think about the isolation we’ve all been in, think about that isolation and then you don’t get your mail.
MADDOW: Yes.
REID: And you can’t get the card people sent you.
MADDOW: And how much we depend so much through the mail. Not just, you know, letters and personal stuff, but literally all the things that we are now doing remote by -- and with only -- we can only do with the assistance of something that arrives at our home delivered by frontline workers who are putting themselves in the line to do it for us. And to have that undermined feels personal.
REID: It’s personal. I mean, I started writing like I was writing all these thank you notes when the show started, and I’ve got people now who just got them. I’ve been on for four weeks. You know, and it’s like this thing you try to do especially for older folks in the family, and they’re not getting them and just like little birthday cards and all these little things that you take for granted, it’s shocking that anyone would do that.
MSNBC’s latest double standard was made possible by advertisers such as Amazon and Verizon. Follow the links to the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the relevant MSNBC transcript from August 24, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s Decision 2020: Republican National Convention
August 24, 2020
8:00 p.m. EasternRACHEL MADDOW: Tonight is night one of what is not actually, technically the Republican National Convention. The Republican Party and the White House had a number of false starts in planning for this convention. The convention site was initially chosen and announced as Charlotte, North Carolina, but then the President in a tweet called that off after criticizing the state of North Carolina for its plan to require measures like social distancing to stop the RNC from becoming some horrific super spreader COVID event because the President objected to that, they announced they would instead move most of the RNC to Jacksonville, Florida, but then they ultimately canceled the Florida plan as well because of spiking COVID numbers in Jacksonville. Well now here it is. What they're doing is something in Washington D.C., but technically the actual convention is over. The party and the convention committee still had a contract to do this thing in Charlotte, North Carolina — the original site that they had chosen, so that is where delegates met today and went through the motions of nominating the President. Now, that low-key, daytime event is over. That was the Republican convention. What we're going to see in Washington, D.C. tonight over the next four nights is something that they will call the convention but technically it’s something different. It will look a little like a convention, at least a little like what the Democrats did, but it’s not put on by the convention committee. It won’t do any convention business. It’s basically a campaign show, a pageant organized by the Trump campaign itself and by the Republican National Committee. To underscore how weird this is, I should tell you the Republicans are also just skipping the whole party platform thing. The statement about what they stand for, what they're running on, they're not doing that. At party conventions every four years, the parties typically draft and vote on a new party platform. Republicans this year announced they won't do that this year. They won't have a platform. Instead, they have passed a resolution saying they intend to reassert their strong support for President Donald Trump and his administration and that's pretty much it. [SIGHS] For all of that drama, when the Republican Party envisioned what the first night of this convention-like event would look like, they probably did not anticipate headlines today about the attorney general of New York filing legal action against the President's personal business today for allegedly misleading financial lenders and inflating the value of its assets. More on that coming up in just a moment. But you should know an attorney general is asking a court to compel the President's son Eric to testify and to force the President's business to comply with multiple subpoenas. There will be a lot of Trump family over the next four nights. Tonight, we will hear from the President's other adult son, Donald Trump Jr. He's still in charge of the President's company that's now being investigated by New York state. The LA Times reported about a week and a half ago that Don Jr. was also referred to the Justice Department for potential prosecution for lying to the Intelligence Committee in the Russia investigation. In terms of what we’re going to see tonight, many of the speeches will be on tape, much like the democratic convention. There are a lot of speeches the Republicans are going to cram in, more than we saw from the Democrats. Of the few live speeches that they will do tonight, in addition to Donald Trump Jr., we are expecting to hear from the President's former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, also from Senator Tim Scott, who appears to be sort of the headliner tonight as the only African-American Republican in the U.S. Senate. Before all that gets going tonight, I'll tell you we will be joined here live on MSNBC by former FBI director James Comey, which is very exciting. It's going to be a busy and complex night. Joy and Nicolle, this is going to be a different kind of week than last week, but there’s also so much going on in the news heading into it, including new sort of trouble for the Trump family at a time that they are really showcasing the President's family at this event.
NICOLLE WALLACE: Yeah. Look, The Washington Post broke the story with a tape of the President's sister basically describing her brother, Donald Trump, the President, as politically repugnant. If the position is, well, that doesn't matter, this White House has decided it matters very much what the family thinks of Donald Trump because there are people with the last name of Trump speaking every single day, so the problem with Trump is what it often is what he's trying to produce, and as you said, this is a production, is contradicted by things coming out of the news. And I think it was Bob Woodward that said he truth always emerges. The challenge for Trump this week is to keep the focus where he wants it. The other sort of backdrop against which this plays out is the political reality. His own advisors and I think I they think mentioned this last week, have said that the structure of the race right now, as a referendum on Trump, is a sure loser. Trump plans to talk every day this week, guaranteeing that the week will be about Trump. That is not a pathway to political rebound in terms of the eyes of his political adviser.
MADDOW: We are — we have been hearing for a while now that Trump was going to speak every week. It doesn't seem like he's going to give an acceptance speech every night. He’s just going to appear —
JOY REID: Yeah.
MADDOW: — in some form, but we don’t know what it is. It is unusual to plan to hear from the President every day, I imagine.
JOY REID: And we’ve already heard from him. I mean, he spent almost an hour ranting today. He's not going to let himself be forgotten, right, in this — whatever this is. Thank you for explaining that. I think, for a lot of people, the opening with the nomination even for me, it was weird, right? It was out of order, but, you know, as you said, that's over.
MADDOW: Convention technically is over.
REID: It’s done.
MADDOW: This is another thing.
REID: It's another thing. What I have been thinking about today is the difference between a democracy and a constitutional monarchy. In a constitutional monarchy, there are perfunctory votes but the monarchy is still the monarchy. The king is still the king. The royal family is the royal family. There is nothing you can do about it. If the royal family has done misdeeds and if the courts wants [sic] to dig into potential illegality, well, it doesn't matter. They are the royal family. And the Trumps come across as if they do believe that America has a royal family and it is them, and so it is interesting to watch them create a pageantry about the Trumps but not about the Trumps the way that last week was about the Bidens. Last week was about the family, the cohesion, the loss, the things they’ve suffered, the way they have come together, the way they were brought together. The same wing with Kamala Harris, her family, the blended family. It was about them as human beings. This isn't about the Trumps as, like, people with friends and family and loved ones. It’s about them as our American monarcharical entity that you cannot eliminate that, you know, Donald Trump came out and said, say, 12 more years. That's exactly what Putin’s given himself, 12 more years. He’s sort of — it’s almost as if the election doesn’t matter anymore because as far as Donald Trump and his family are concerned, they’ve established themselves as monarchs and if they have to keep power the way monarchs do, they’ll do it.
