MSNBC headliners decried former President Donald Trump’s seemingly racist and discriminatory rhetoric he’s lashed out towards the Latino American judge presiding over his criminal hush money trial.
On Wednesday morning, Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski skewered Trump’s “new line of attack against Judge Juan Merchan” after leaving the courthouse in New York on Tuesday.
In a clip shared by MSNBC, Trump begins his rant with snippy remarks asking where does Merchan come from.
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“The judge hates Donald Trump,” Trump said, speaking of himself in third person. “Just take a look. Take a look at him. Take a look at where he comes from. He can’t stand Donald Trump. He’s doing everything in his power.”
Merchan was born in Colombia, moved to the U.S. when he was 6, and was raised and attended undergrad and law school in New York. He spent years building his legal resume.
MSNBC contributor Sam Stein—and former Daily Beast politics editor—said the language was “typical Trump,” comparing the situation to an incident in 2016 when Judge Gonzalo Curiel oversaw the case involving the defrauding of Trump University students. At the time, Trump chided the judge for being Mexican.
“‘Where he comes from’ could be—and I think, deliberately—a phrase to be interpreted however the viewer wants. But I think we all know what the implication was,” Stein said. “That statement, in its own right, would’ve been a shock to the system six, seven years ago. And it was. I remember how we felt when it first happened. But it’s become sort of normalized because we’ve been so inundated with Trump.”
Stein elaborated about how the derogatory speech—and Trump’s alleged hush-money payment—doesn’t sway his voters or change their political views of him as a leader.
“There’s an acceptance,” Brzezinski said.
“It’s become baked into our political psyche,” Stein added.
Ironically, Republican Rep. Steve King from Iowa was stripped of his congressional duties in 2020 after he attempted to be a champion for white supremacy. As a dedicated Trump supporter and 20-year member of Congress, King lost appeal when he endorsed Nazi sympathizers, referred to Latin American immigrants as “dirt,” repeatedly made disparaging comments about Black and Asian Americans, considered himself to be a “nationalist,” and questioned when white supremacy became a negative concept.
However, similar forms of admonishment have been lost on Trump.
Joe Scarborough said the twice-impeached president’s words were more than just “concerning or nerve-wracking” and considered the language to be “open, blatant racism that has been mainstreamed into American political life.”
“Donald Trump speaks in code because he wants people to see the judge as an ‘other.’ Everybody’s an ‘other’ unless their immigrant parents were from Scotland and Germany,” Scarborough said.
Then, he disgustingly recalled people willing to tolerate Trump’s “Nazi”-like and “fascist” rhetoric targeted towards lawmakers who aren’t white.
“There’s so much of it that it’s hard to keep track,” Brzezinski said.
“[People] are voting for a racist. They’re making an active choice,” Scarborough snapped. “This isn’t a passive choice. … This is them hearing he’s a racist. These are racist terms. … For Donald Trump, it’s always ‘us versus the other.’
“People are actively choosing… to vote for this guy, to vote for a bigot, a fascist, a man who says he wants to be an authoritarian and a dictator on day one.”
