Rachel Maddow wants it both ways. She portrays President Trump as a dangerous “would-be strongman” and, in the same breath, calls him weak, clumsy, and incompetent. But those claims don’t add up. A strongman is an authoritarian ruler who consolidates power through fear, censorship, and brutality — crushing opposition and silencing critics. A clown show, by definition, is silly entertainment put on for laughs. By trying to use both to describe the same man, Maddow undermines her own narrative — especially when her show, and MSNBC as a whole, have become the real clown show of American media.
Maddow said:
“Again, just in today’s headlines, there’s plenty of news on that front as well because whatever you think of his intentions, his skill level is low. I mean, to the extent that what he’s trying to do depends on him using his control over the government to do the things he wants to do, right? The operations of his government and to a certain extent, his political operation continue every day to be kind of a clown show. I mean, for a would-be strongman, for a man who wants to seem like a Putin type, right? Like one of these strongmen that he so admires all over the world, for a would-be strongman, there really is profound weakness here.”
So which is it? Is Trump a strongman (authoritarian) who threatens democracy itself, or the head of a “clown show” too weak to control the government?
Maddow can’t have it both ways. Her contradiction exposes the emptiness of her argument — and the desperation of partisan media that has to recycle fear and mockery just to keep its narrative alive.