Rachel Maddow on Monday highlighted what she sees as an unexpected benefit of having a “bad president” like Donald Trump: his incompetence and failures are ultimately helping the country.
Bad President, Unexpected Upside
“To state the obvious, generally speaking, having a bad president is bad for a country,” Maddow said, opening her show. “I mean, you don’t wish that on any country anywhere. Most particularly, you don’t wish it on a country that you love.”
She elaborated: “Having somebody at the top of a political pyramid, who is corrupt, who is incompetent, who seeks to stay in power even when he loses elections so he can build monuments to himself and basically loot the place. I mean, that’s just not good. You wouldn’t wish that on any country. You certainly would not wish it on your own.”
Incompetence as a Silver Lining
“That said, what we are learning right now, what we are living through right now is the fact that when you have a bad president, turns out he’s also bad at pursuing the things that he wants for himself,” she explained.
When up “against someone with evil intent, the best you can hope for is that their intent will change” or “that they’ll be an incompetent buffoon who fails at everything he tries,” she said.
“And in the case of Donald Trump, what we are experiencing right now is his compounding failures, his blustering incompetence and his illiteracy kind of paying off for us as a country,” she added.
Examples of Trump's Failures
Maddow listed several recent Trump failures, including the shuttering of the so-called Alligator Alcatraz migrant detention center, his widely criticized deal with Iran, and his botched renovation of the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall.
“Right now, the opposition to President Donald Trump is ascendant and Trump is flailing in ways that are obvious to everyone,” Maddow concluded. “He’s a laughingstock and his policies are failing and being abandoned and his supporters are fleeing.”
