The liberal sulking over Donald Trump’s win on election night continued on MSNBC, Wednesday. The former editor of Newsweek huffed, “This is so, so dispiriting. I think decency lost last night. And that's what's so hurtful about this. Not just that Hillary Clinton lost, but our image of who we are as a people, that we're tolerant, decent people suffered a real setback.”
Casually invoking the Nazis, he continued, “We face challenges in the past to our democratic system, throughout American history slavery to, you know, Naziism.” Prior to the election, Alter worried that the “well-being of millions” is at stake.
In 2015, the journalist insisted there was a “vileness gap” between the Republicans and Democrats.
MSNBC guest D.L. Hughley appeared after Clinton’s concession speech. He wondered of Trump: “How do you govern when your whole campaign was built on the hatred of somebody else?” Late on Tuesday night, the actor fretted, “My daddy survived Jim Crow.”
A transcript of the exchange:
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MSNBC
11/9/16
11:55am ETD.L. HUGHLEY: You know, I was struck by the speech, too. I mean, I obviously think it was one of the classiest speeches I have ever seen. How do you govern when your whole campaign was built on the hatred of somebody else? Once, absent that, because you just qualified a bunch of things. We don’t know any of these things. What we do know is we are as equally motivated by not seeing her get the White House as seeing him do it. So what do you do when the whole premise of your — hating people is not governance. So, I think it’s going to be interesting.
TAMRON HALL: To your point, my colleague Carl Quintanilla I'm reading this and on the trading floor, the New York Stock Exchange, including to Carl Quintanilla, people were booing, shouting "Lock her up." These are the Wall Street people.
HUGHLEY: Right.
HALL: Some individuals. I mean, we know it wasn’t the entire room, but it was enough that Carl Quintanilla, responsible journalist — this is what was happening.
JONATHAN ALTER: This is so, so dispiriting. I think decency lost last night. And that's what's so hurtful about this. Not just that Hillary Clinton lost, but our image of who we are as a people, that we're tolerant, decent people suffered a real setback.
HALL: Yeah.
ALTER: That doesn’t mean we can’t get that back.. We face challenges in the past to our democratic system, throughout American history slavery to, you know, Naziism. We have faced challenges before to who we are as a people. And we've risen to it. So, what she was saying to us is so important is stay in that fight. Don’t give up trying to defend our Constitution.
