MSNBC guest disparages Trump voters for choosing 'felon,' not wanting to 'elect a Black woman'
A Princeton academic criticized the 78 million voters who backed Donald Trump in the 2024 election during an MSNBC interview Monday. Eddie Glaude suggested these Americans supported a candidate who aims to "destroy the republic" because they "didn't want to elect a Black woman."
"I don't know what it's going to take for 78 million Americans to deal with what motivated them to make this, and the choice that they've made, we have to just be honest, is to literally throw the republic into the trash bin," Glaude told host Nicolle Wallace.
Their discussion centered on the Supreme Court's temporary block of a lower court order. The original order required the Trump administration to return a Maryland resident, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador last month. The govern
ment has acknowledged Garcia's removal from the U.S. was an "administrative error."
"We chose a felon who is more interested in loyalty, who is more interested in retribution, who is more interested in grift than in democracy, and we chose a felon because we didn't want to elect a Black woman," Glaude stated. "So to read that, to actually explicate that is to say we would rather destroy the republic than for that to have happened, and until we grapple with it, there's no amount of protesting I could do, there's no amount of resistance that could come into play to actually force 78 million people to grapple with what motivated them to put themselves in this position."
Wallace agreed with Glaude, saying, "you're right in that 78 million people voted for someone who wants to shred the Constitution."
Glaude further argued discrimination fueled Trump's support. "There's this sense, this tragic dimension of the American project where the extension of basic democratic principles, the idea that dignity and standing should be accorded to anyone, no matter their gender, no matter where they're from, no matter their color. That has been challenged because some people believe that, by definition, they ought to be superior to others, and that the country should be organized in such a way to ensure that fact. And we have been willing to do monstrous things in defense of it," he said.
"People have been using it in some ways, Nicole, for their own self-interest," Glaude added.
Glaude also attacked Trump supporters in December, one month after the president's election. During another conversation with Wallace on her program in December 2024, he claimed that negative emotions and self-interest formed the foundation of Trump's political movement.
"So we have the collision of greed and hatred right in front of us and that's at the heart of Trumpism, of MAGAism. It's always been greed, always been selfish, it's always been hatred, and now it's in full, full view," Glaude stated.
He suggested in November that Trump won because "Whiteness" felt threatened, which prompted some challenge from MSNBC presenter Stephanie Ruhle.
"So there's this sense, right, that Whiteness is under threat – the demographic shifts. The country is – all of these racially ambiguous children on Cheerios commercials are confusing the hell out of me," he remarked during a November 8 appearance on Ruhle's "The 11th Hour."
Ruhle countered, "Eddie, a lot of people voted because their life's too damn expensive."
Glaude rejected the idea that economic concerns drove voters to support Trump during their exchange.
"They voted for a crook, a person who they know is doing everything to undermine the so-called country that they love. And then they're telling us the BS, that it's economics. We know that's not true. We know it's not true," Glaude concluded.