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MSNBC host Rachel Maddow tore into Elon Musk and Presiden Donald Trump over, respectively, a Nazi-ish salute and a batch of pardons that reminded her of Hitler’s Brownshirts in a scathing rant to cap off Inauguration Day.
The media spent most of Monday covering every moment of Trump’s inauguration to a second term, but one event overshadowed nearly everything else that came before and after it — Trump’s pardons and commutations for the January 6 defendants, including those who committed violence against police.
Also grabbing negative attention was Musk’s salute, which many saw as a Nazi salute and even a close ally saw as a fascist gesture in a since-deleted tweet.
On Monday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, Maddow linked the two together by characterizing Trump’s pardons as similar to those of several authoritarians around the world and across history including “the SA in Germany” — better known as Hitler’s Brownshirts:
Let me show you a little piece of tape here. I’m only going to play it once, but in case you haven’t seen this yet, this today was Elon Musk, richest man in the world, biggest political donor in the history of our country. This is him today, twice throwing something that looks like what is politely called the Roman salute at the hockey arena in Washington before Trump’s appearance there tonight.
And maybe this is not what he meant when he did it. Who among us knows what is in the hearts of men? Mr. Musk has not yet commented on what he was doing here, but the Roman salute is a thing, and that is what it looks like Elon– Elon Musk was doing, which added a nice bloodcurdling chill to the day for many people today.
Go ahead and roll that tape.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELON MUSK, TESLA CEO: And I just want to say thank you for making it happen. Thank you. Thank you. My heart goes out to you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: He does it twice.
And again, maybe that’s not what he meant. Maybe he doesn’t know what that is. That happened today.
Earlier in the day, we started seeing messages fly from January 6th defendants and their families claiming even before any official pardons had been signed, that they were getting word that their charges were being dropped or they were being processed for release from prison.
This is one of the earliest messages we saw today online. This man claiming the Justice Department was dropping his pending criminal case.
This is a man who had been charged with beating police officers with a baseball bat. That’s him with the black bat there on the left side of your screen. That’s at the Capitol building, obviously, on January 6th, there had been word, including from Vice President J.D. Vance, that nobody charged with violence against police officers would be pardoned by Trump.
But this man today posted online that he’d heard that his case was being dropped.
Tonight, within the past hour, we got word that there appears to not have been a distinction made between those convicted of just participating in the January 6th attack and those who participated violently in the attack, including those who attacked police officers physically.
The list of people whose sentences were commuted by Trump today, commuted to time served so they can be released — released from prison includes some of the people convicted of violence against police officers. It includes paramilitary leaders who were sentenced for seditious conspiracy for attempting to overthrow the U.S. government by force.
You may have seen today that the Proud Boys put on their full colors and marched today in Washington in advance of tonight’s announcement, saying, “Free our boys”. Well, now, their leaders and their members convicted of trying to overthrow the government and of violence against police officers, they are all being sprung out of prison.
Fifteen hundred people altogether either receiving pardons and commutations from Trump tonight. Of all the possibilities considered about what Trump would do with the people who committed violence on his behalf on January 6th, this was the maximalist option, pardoning and commuting all of their sentences so that all of them are released. This was the maximalist option.
And, you know, like the blatant transactional, open for business corruption, you know, founding his own currency that you can buy to put money in his pocket the weekend before he becomes president, aside from all of that, just blatant open for business corruption, what we’re seeing here with the January 6th pardons, this kind of thing does have the benefit of novelty, right? We’ve never quite seen something like this before.
But like with the corruption, the boring thing about it is that we know exactly what this leads to. Authoritarian rulers all over the world have always liked to have paramilitary, loyal, but unofficial perpetrators of violence and menace to work on their behalf, to intimidate and hurt anyone in opposition, to make it too scary for normal people to participate in politics or civic life. To make everybody who might oppose Trump in any way worry about the thugs that might turn up at their door.
Trump pardoning and released from prison the January 6th defendants, including the paramilitaries, means he is effectively immunizing his followers from committing violence in his name. He’s making clear, you know, if you support me, the law doesn’t apply to you.
Not incidentally, the people he’s pardoning and their families will feel like they owe Trump everything, and that they therefore should and now can do absolutely anything for him.
In authoritarian Hungary, Viktor Orban’s government pardoned a far right agitator who had set fire to the homes of Orban’s political rivals.
In Turkey, Erdogan had pardoned the leader of a far right nationalist paramilitary group that mobilized on his behalf and engaged in street violence.
In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe pardoned hundreds of people who carried out election related violence on his behalf.
Pinochet in Chile and Fujimori in Peru gave blanket amnesties to their security forces.
If you’re on my side, the law doesn’t apply to you. Don’t even ask me about the SA in Germany. Don’t get me started.
But this is day one, unfolding pretty much the way we expected it to. And yes, this is novel in American history, but it is also knowable in world history because it’s the same stuff every other would be authoritarian leader does in every country that has had to contend with a leader like that.
And as Americans, you know, we’ve had bad inaugurations before, including the one where one of the principals was too drunk to stand. We’ve had blatant cash in envelopes to the vice president corruption before. We’ve had political violence before. We’ve had civil war.
But before, each of those things has been treated as a calamity and a scandal. This time, it’s a platform.
This is textbook authoritarian takeover 101 tactics, which means today and literally over the next few days, they’re going to see what they can get away with and how much they can cow people into not opposing what they’re doing and not speaking out about what’s wrong with it.
More than ever, this is not a time to pretend this isn’t happening. You’re going to want to have a good answer when you get asked what you did for your country when your country started to take a turn this radical.
We are here. It’s happening in our lifetimes. Well, we are citizens responsible for the fate of our country. All hands on deck.
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