Rachel Maddow stopped by Late Night with Stephen Colbert Tuesday to share her thoughts on Trump’s first 100 days back in office.
When Colbert asked her if there were any big differences so far from Trump’s first 100 days back in 2017, Maddow pointed to the type of backlash Trump’s received.
“You might remember, he was inaugurated in the first term and then the day after was the Women’s March,” Maddow explained, describing the march as “one of the hugest peaceful civil disobedience demonstrations all over the world that there’s ever been.”
Maddow continued, “This time was different. This term people protest in, I swear, all 50 states, every day. And it never stops. … 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’s the demonstration,” Maddow said.
Maddow, who has not taken a weekday off for Trump’s entire first 100 days, explained why she was in a far more hopeful mood than she expected to be before Inauguration Day:
“There isn’t a Republican member of Congress anywhere in the country, in any congressional district, who can show his or her face without getting yelled at by his or her constituents about what Trump is doing. And that is different,” Maddow said.
“That’s what happens when you cut Meals on Wheels,” she said. “You cut Head Start. You mess with Social Security. You do all this stuff, you are never gonna survive politically, and that’s the message the American people are sending already.”
Maddow’s other big insight into Trump’s second term so far focused on what hadn’t changed from 2017.
“The common wisdom when Trump was coming back for a second term was that he would have worked out all the kinks,” Maddow said.
She continued, “The common wisdom was he’ll be better at it this time around. Not true. Turns out there was no ‘learning about how to do the stuff.’”
Colbert chimed in, “That’s a common problem with authoritarianism, isn’t it? Because it all kind of has to go through one guy.”
Maddow agreed, bringing up Trump’s recent comments that implied he was inspired to re-open Alcatraz from a Clint Eastwood movie.
“Personalization of government means you are depending on the personal competence of the guy in charge,” Maddow said. “He [Trump] thinks movies are real. Well, that’s a limiting factor in terms of what can happen at an authoritarian government.”
