MSNBC host Joy Reid compares Trump to Hitler during rant on 'how fascism takes root'

Far-left MSNBC host Joy Reid likened Donald Trump to Hitler on Wednesday and said the former president was "also viewed as a clown, a goon who could be kept in line." 

Reid opened her show by discussing "fascism and how it takes root." Reid said fascism does not take root through a dramatic coup, but "more often a deal, a bargain between the would-be dictator and the establishment, both political and media," who believe power would tame the dictator. 

"Like Trump, Hitler was also viewed as a clown, a goon who could be kept in line. And then there are the accommodations that the media makes with autocracy," Reid said, noting a New York Times article on Hitler from 1922, which said, "Hitler’s antisemitism was not so violent or genuine as it sounded."

Reid compared Hitler's failed coup that had "set the stage" for Nazi Germany, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, to the Jan. 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill.

MSNBC host Joy Reid likens Donald Trump to Hitler during rant on how "fascism takes root." (Screenshot/MSNBC)

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"And when he [Hitler] was freed from prison, just over a year after the failed putsch, the Times offered this unfortunate and incorrect assessment, that Hitler had been tamed by prison. The next year, Mein Kampf was published. So much of this sounds familiar. And believe me, I wish it didn’t. The establishment thinks that they can be controlled and poof, they’re stuck with them," she said. 

Reid turned to the 2024 election and said politicians, voters and the media were talking about a "dangerous person" coming back into power. 

"And those who are legitimately afraid of this outcome are being quiet about it," she said. 

Reid cited another New York Times report that said there was a "consensus" out of Davos that participants believed Trump would win in 2024. 

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a caucus site at Horizon Events Center, in Clive, Iowa, Monday, Jan. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

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However, privately, the participants said, they are "frustrated, upset, worried and nervous about a second Trump presidency." 

"They don't want to say this out loud, for the same reasons as last time. Fear of retribution," she continued.

MSNBC political analyst Claire McCaskill suggested during a media appearance in 2023 that Trump was "more dangerous," than Hitler and Mussolini. 

Former U.S. President Donald Trump waves to the crowd on the field during halftime in the Palmetto Bowl between Clemson and South Carolina at Williams Brice Stadium on November 25, 2023 in Columbia, South Carolina. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

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"A lot of people have tried to draw similarities between Mussolini and Hitler and the use of the terminology like ‘vermin’ and the drive that those men had towards autocracy and dictatorship," McCaskill responded. 

"The difference, though, I think makes Donald Trump even more dangerous, and that is he has no philosophy he believes in. He is not trying to expand the boundaries of the United States of America," she continued.

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