Maddow: Trump is terrible at everything except this one thing

0:00 It was three months ago tonight when

0:02 the president posted online a video depicting

0:06 former President Barack Obama and former First

0:10 Lady Michelle Obama as if they were apes.

0:14 President Trump did later take it down.

0:17 He refused to apologize for it and still hasn't to this day.

0:20 That was three months ago.

0:22 It was five months ago when Donald Trump

0:24 confirmed something that he had previously long denied.

0:28 Back in his first term, President Trump had told a group of senators

0:32 at the White House that he thought it was terrible,

0:34 that immigrants to America were from s-hole countries.

0:40 And according to reporting at the time,

0:42 he named some predominantly black countries,

0:44 and he said they were s-hole countries,

0:46 and couldn't we instead have immigrants from predominantly white countries?

0:49 He mentioned Norway.

0:51 Since countries with white populations are apparently good,

0:56 and countries with Black populations are swear words.

1:00 So Donald Trump said that in his first term,

1:03 and when it was reported that he had said that, he denied it.

1:06 He said he had never, ever used that language.

1:08 But then just a few months ago,

1:09 he started bragging proudly, weirdly at a speech in Pennsylvania.

1:13 He started bragging that yes, actually, despite all those earlier denials,

1:17 of course he had used that term and moreover, he still believes it.

1:21 Predominantly black countries are s-hole countries.

1:28 This administration, I think it's clear from just the repeated daily news cycle.

1:32 I think this administration They're terrible in the court of public opinion,

1:49 which you can see in the polls,

1:50 which is going to have a big political impact on them

1:53 the next time people get a chance to vote for them en masse.

1:57 They're terrible, really terrible at all the technocratic

2:00 practical stuff a government is supposed to do,

2:01 including basic stuff like the weather.

2:04 They're terrible at war, terrible at diplomacy.

2:07 They're even terrible at hiding the ball in terms

2:10 of how much this president does whatever Vladimir Putin wants,

2:12 even when it makes no sense for us.

2:14 They're just not great.

2:16 They're bad at basically everything they try to do.

2:21 But on the issue of race, on the treatment of African Americans, specifically,

2:28 even being terrible at what they're doing has

2:33 still proven to be disastrous for our country.

2:36 And it is in part the posturing and the messaging

2:40 and the racist vibes from the White House and the president.

2:44 That is stuff that validates and excites the worst bigots in the country,

2:48 and that is consequential.

2:50 But it's more than that, to.

2:52 We are now about 16 months into what has been, from day one,

2:58 a concerted and intense targeting of Black Americans,

3:03 specifically by this president and by this administration.

3:07 On his first full day in office, he proclaims war on diversity efforts,

3:12 not only in government but in any institution

3:14 in the country over which he can exert leverage,

3:17 everything from schools and universities, to law firms,

3:20 to private businesses of every stripe.

3:22 He then immediately started firing some of the highest-profile

3:26 Black public officials in the whole U .S.

3:29 government, seemingly regardless of any other thing about them.

3:32 I mean, right away we get the firing of the chairman

3:35 of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles C .Q.

3:38 Brown.

3:39 We get the firing of the librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden,

3:41 and then it's Gwynne Wilcox from the National Label Relations Board.

3:45 And then it's Robert Primus, the chair of the Surface Transportation Board.

3:47 And then it's Alvin Brown from the NTSB.

3:50 And then it's Peggy Carr,

3:50 the head of the National Center for Education Statistics.

3:53 And then it's Willie Phillips from FERC,

3:55 from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

3:57 And then it's Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors,

4:00 and on and on and on.

4:03 When Trump and his top political donor, Elon Musk,

4:06 then started just lopping off huge swaths

4:08 of the federal government to disastrous practical effect,

4:11 the largest and most egregious cuts targeted federal

4:15 agencies that employed a disproportionate number of black employees.

4:21 Reporter Erica Green wrote about this a few months ago for the Times,

4:24 noting that nothing had moved backwards in the federal

4:27 government for black Americans this quickly or this far

4:30 in over 100 years since Woodrow Wilson came

4:33 in in 1912 and resegregated the federal workforce.

4:37 Quote, black employees were fired or demoted to lower level jobs,

4:41 relegated to separate and inferior lunchrooms and other

4:44 facilities and accused of making white women feel unsafe.

4:47 Those who remained were humiliated.

4:49 A black worker in the Postal Service was surrounded by screens,

4:52 so white workers would not have to look at him.

4:55 Another employee had a cage built around

4:57 him to separate him from his white counterparts.

5:00 A clerk in the Treasury Secretary's

5:01 office was assigned to rewrite all correspondence,

5:04 to address black employees by their first names.

5:12 The way Trump addressed the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden,

5:15 by her first name, when he crowed publicly about firing her for no reason.

5:24 In the year of our Lord 2025 and now 2026,

5:27 this president and this administration is not

5:30 just inheriting that history from the Wilson administration,

5:34 it's furthering it in its own ways.

5:39 Since 1965, there has been an an executive order in effect.

5:43 It was signed by Lyndon Johnson, 1965.

5:46 Since 1965, all federal contractors have been banned

5:50 by executive order from discriminating on the basis of race,

5:54 color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or national origin.

5:57 Donald Trump rescinded that 1965 rule on his first full day in office.

6:03 Less than a month later, Trump announced another rule change.

6:06 They rescinded clause 52 .222-21 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation,

6:13 which doesn't sound like much, but I'll tell you what the title of that is.

6:17 It's Prohibition of Segregated Facilities.

6:22 That's what Trump rescinded less than one

6:24 month into being back in the White House.

6:26 That section reads, quote,

6:27 the contractor agrees that it does not and will not maintain

6:32 or provide for its employees any

6:34 segregated facilities at any of its establishments,

6:37 and that it does not and will not permit its employees to perform

6:40 their services at any location under

6:42 its control where segregated facilities are maintained.

6:45 That anti-segregation clause has been in government contracts for decades.

6:51 Donald Trump overtly reached out to rescind it,

6:56 which means bluntly that the federal government no

7:01 longer explicitly prohibits contractors from having segregated restaurants,

7:04 waiting rooms and drinking fountains.

7:08 Make America great again, right?

7:12 Recently fired and sidelined employees in the Department

7:15 of Housing and Urban Development have started sounding the alarm

7:20 that the Trump administration is no longer just bluntly no

7:23 longer enforcing a federal law known as the Fair Housing Act.

7:27 Fair Housing Act, another pillar

7:29 of the civil rights movements and its achievements.

7:34 The Fair Housing Act dates to 1968.

7:36 It says you can't refuse to rent to someone or refuse

7:39 to sell a house to someone on account of their race

7:41 or their color or religion or national origin or any

7:44 other factor against which we're supposed to be protected from discrimination.

7:48 According to current and former employees of the Department

7:51 of Housing and Urban Development under Donald Trump, they have dropped.

7:55 They have dropped enforcement of the federal housing act.

8:02 In Trump's first year back in office,

8:04 black unemployment spiked in this country from 6 .2% all the way up to 7 .5%,

8:09 making it the highest of all racial groups.

8:14 Under Joe Biden, black unemployment had been at a record low of 4 .8%,

8:18 spiking now under Donald Trump.

8:25 The Trump administration, generally speaking, is bad at its work.

8:29 It is bad at what it sets its mind to in all sorts of ways.

8:32 But black Americans, African-Americans have been targeted by this administration

8:38 in a concerted way that has nevertheless been devastating,

8:42 even though the Trump administration isn't good

8:44 at anything they set their mind to.

8:46 And that was all before the conservative majority on the U .S.

8:50 Supreme Court, including all of Trump's appointees,

8:52 voted to effectively end the Voting Rights Act a few days ago.

8:56 As soon as the court said they would take up that case,

8:59 people started mapping the worst-case scenario

9:01 for what Trump and the Republicans would do,

9:04 particularly in the South, if the court gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965,

9:10 the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement.

9:15 And the before and after looks like

9:17 the snapback after the end of Reconstruction, after the Civil War.

9:22 I mean look at the state of Louisiana there.

9:24 A third of the population of Louisiana is black.

9:31 Louisiana's Republican governor canceled

9:33 congressional elections that are already

9:35 underway in that state to rush through new maps

9:38 that will presumably make sure that even though one-third

9:41 of the The population of that state is black.

9:43 There will be no black representation in Congress for Louisiana at all.

9:46 South Carolina, a quarter of the population is black.

9:50 They have one majority-minority district represented

9:53 by an African American Democrat, Jim Clyburn.

9:56 They are going to try to get rid of that one

9:58 black district so that South Carolina is all white,

10:02 all Republican in representation,

10:04 while a quarter of the people who live in that state are black.

10:09 In Tennessee, one in six residents is black.

10:12 Republicans now want to make sure all nine congressional

10:15 seats in Tennessee are white, all nine of them.

10:18 They want it to be nine, nine, 9-0, white and Republican,

10:22 when one in six people in that state is black.

10:26 In her dissent from the majority ruling,

10:29 Justice Elena Kagan said it will likely cause the largest

10:33 reduction to minority representation since the end of Reconstruction.

10:37 She probably didn't need to use the word likely there.

10:42 The war on black Americans that is being waged by this president

10:45 and this attack on black public officials in the federal government,

11:02 black employees in the federal government,

11:04 black representatives in Congress and now all around

11:08 the country where everywhere Republicans are in charge

11:11 they are scrambling to make sure that black

11:13 public officials can no longer hold office.

11:18 We're going to talk tonight about the pushback

11:20 against that and the strategies to make them pay for it both in Louisiana which

11:24 is ground zero here and around the country.

11:26 We're going to talk tonight about some

11:27 surprising pushback from churches and the clergy.

11:30 We're going to talk tonight about a blistering takedown of Trump

11:34 in the administration in federal court in Washington in a most unexpected case.

11:39 But big picture here,

11:41 we are in the middle of something really radical in this country,

11:44 not just to get rid of our constitutional republic,

11:48 to replace our form of government with something else,

11:52 but to get rid of the multiracial

11:55 democracy that our constitution is supposed to protect.

11:57 It is a war on black America.

12:00 The fight to save it is looking like it's

12:02 going to be the fight of all of our lives.