Tipsheet

Jen Psaki and Liberal Scholar Debate on What to Do With the 'Bad People' Who Support Trump

Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki is concerned that there are still too many Trump supporters in the U.S. and exasperated that liberals will have to learn how to live them. 

During a segment on Jen Psaki's new MSNBC show, Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the host that 74 million people must learn how to live with all of the "bad people" who support the former president. 

"I think we have to accept that people who we completely disagree with are sometimes going to win, so there's, what, 74 million Trump supporters, voters? We can't just wish them away," Hamid said.

Calling Trump supporters a threat and a challenge, Hamid suggested that if Trump were to be elected again, America's democracy would be at stake. 

"They're not going to disappear. So then we have to find a way to live with them even if we think they're bad people, even if we think they're a threat to everything we hold dear, because what is the other option that's in front of us? That's the challenge because a lot of people will say, 'Well, they're deplorable and we can't find a way to live with them,'" Hamid told Psaki. 

He continued to tell the roundtable that it is time to accept Republicans who support Trump, using the example of other countries that elect leaders who lean to the right. 

"It's a universal thing, and we can talk about Europe has its cases where in Italy we might have the first far-right prime minister since Mussolini and that person will have come to power through elections, or the Sweden Democrats, the party with neo-Nazi origins," Hamid said, adding, "So, it's not just America, it's happening all over the place because we're not debating economic issues anymore, we're debating cultural issues, identity issues, issues around religion." 

Since 2016, Democrats have deemed Trump supporters as a threat to democracy. During a September speech, President Joe Biden cautioned against "Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans" who "represent an extremism that threatens the very foundation of our republic." 

Biden also accused Trump supporters of taking the country backward and lighting the flames of political violence. However, he must have forgotten that during the 2020 protests, Biden and the rest of the Democratic Party incited violence and hate toward police officers, promoting people to loot and destroy cities.