MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell praised those within the migrant caravan headed toward the U.S. on Tuesday night, and criticized supporters of President Donald Trump.
O’Donnell opened his show saying the migrants “would be an asset to this country,” just before describing Trump voters as “loathing, desperately fearful.” He claimed “the only thing they fear more than people from Central America is people from the Middle East.”
The host began his tirade against Trump voters saying:
Loathing and hatred is the jet fuel formula for the Trump campaigns. Donald Trump wants you to know that he hates the same people you hate. If you hate Muslims, if you hate black people, if you hate anyone who lives south of the Rio Grande. But he knows he cannot come out and say, ‘I’m a hater, I’m a racist,’ and he knows he doesn’t have to. He knows he got the Ku Klux Klan vote without saying ‘I’m a racist’ out loud. He knows he got David Duke’s enthusiastic support without having to say ‘I’m a racist’ out loud.
“He knows that in America, the word Nationalist usually follows the word white, white Nationalist,” O’Donnell went on to say. “That’s what it’s meant in the twenty-first century. Trump voters understand, David Duke understands, Donald Trump has to leave the word ‘white’ out of his use of the world nationalist. But when Donald Trump uses that word, he wants you to hear it as racist.”
The MSNBC host dismissed claims that Democrats had anything to do with the caravan and claimed Trump is using the movement to “create more fear and loathing in his desperately fearful supporters.”
O’Donnell also credited Trump for the size of the caravan. “We do know that the numbers have grown because the president of the United States has drawn so much attention to it,” he asserted. “More people in Central America have decided to get in the flow of these refugees, and they’re doing that for mutual protection.”