‘Trump knows our country better than we do’

Panel on Morning Joe reacted with shock and despair to Donald Trump’s historic election victory on Wednesday morning.

On air moments after Trump’s second term was confirmed, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said, “This is the biggest red wave I’ve seen since Ronald Reagan won 49 states in 1984.” He added that Trump won “in dominant fashion” and said America was waking up to “a Democratic Party that just got wiped out this morning.”

Co-host Jonathan Lemire was similarly awed by the result, saying Republicans had “steamrolled” the presidential race, also taking control of the Senate and potentially on their way to taking the House.

“He was impeached twice,” Lemire said of Trump. “He botched the handling of the pandemic. He faced four criminal cases. He inspired January 6. And he won anyway. And now he will return to office with few roadblocks internally, encouragement from Moscow and other foreign opponents and a Supreme Court , who have said that his power is largely unchecked.”

Perhaps the most lurid analysis came from Claire McCaskill, the former Democratic senator from Missouri.

“First, I think we have to recognize that Donald Trump knows our country better than we do,” McCaskill said. “I think he found that anger and, frankly, fear was far more powerful than appealing to people’s better angels. That anger and fear would work in this election, whether you’re afraid of immigrants or afraid of people, there’s trans, he found out. And I think we all thought that everyone’s better angels would prevail. Turns out, when Donald Trump came down the escalator, they’re not returned.”

She also gave credit to Trump’s campaign managers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita.

“The majority of America believes he was persecuted, not prosecuted,” McCaskill said. “And there’s no question that our grasp of, ‘Hey, we’ve got to make sure the same rules apply to everybody, we’ve got to make sure the rule of law applies to all Americans, no matter who you are, or how powerful you are…’ That turns out not to be true. America believed—the majority of Americans believed—that he was a victim in these prosecutions, not a perpetrator.”

“His voters think he’s a victim,” co-host Willie Geist said of Trump’s legal troubles. “And they think he’s carrying their grievances with him and now back to the White House. “Whether it’s generals coming out and calling him a fascist, whether it’s a whole host of elites, celebrities coming next to Kamala Harris, a largely adversarial news outlet against Donald Trump — he resisted it all. And they didn’t like that. They didn’t like that it was him against the world.”

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