Chris Hayes opened Tuesday’s episode of his MSNBC show with a bleak look Donald Trump’s latest attacks on “our American birthright of a free and open society,” including against independent universities, real science and the free press.
But despite grim recent events, Hayes argued that there is a “real silver lining” — that these institutions are being forced to fight him.
Hayes began by talking about Trump’s escalating war on Harvard university, which as Hayes explained, is a campaign to “put Harvard University, nation’s oldest college, out of business.” This most recently includes Trump’s order to cancel all federal contracts with the university, an unprecedented move that was preceded by the equally unprecedented order to cease all foreign student admissions.
“They want to rewrite the school’s curriculum in a way that is favorable and deferential to Trump and his worldview. Donald Trump wants the most powerful, legendary institution higher education in this country, arguably in the world, to bend the knee to his whims and become a kind of controlled asset of MAGA. That is the goal here,” Hayes said.
Hayes noted Trump’s attacks on other universities, his administration’s increasingly clear opposition to vaccinations, and his attacks on media — which included a shout-out to the fiery speech “60 Minutes” reporter Scott Pelley gave last week to graduating seniors at Wake Forest University.
“Pelly, to his great credit, is not cowed, and it’s true that many aren’t. Not every outlet is capitulated to Trump,” Hayes said, adding a little later, “and we’re seeing this type of resistance everywhere, sometimes in sort of unexpected areas. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, I think he’s a pretty conservative guy, as far as I can know. He’s a guy who was initially elevated to the job of Federal Reserve Chair by a guy named Donald Trump in his first term, is fighting the President’s pressure campaign to remove him from his position, calling on the next generation to preserve our democratic institutions again in another weekend commencement speech at Princeton University.”
“Here’s the single most important thing for everyone to understand about this ongoing, existential battle to preserve our American birthright of a free and open society,” Hayes continued. “All these institutions and the people that power them, and the vast sources of independent knowledge, production and authority contained within them, that form what is the kind of civil society of America altogether are more powerful than this one petty, addled man, and Donald Trump knows it, and that’s why he wants to end them.”
“And the real silver lining here, and there is one, is that Trump’s attacks are so reckless and so baseless and transparent, they have left our independent institutions with no choice but to fight back. Good. We need them.”
Watch the whole commentary below:
