It is time for Rachel Maddow cut the chuckling and get deadly serious. by Hal M. Brown

I have admired Rachel Maddow ever since she began her show on MSNBC. I always agree with everything she says. I don't always agree with how she says it or how she produces her show. I address the latter today.

Last night Rachel Maddow found something to smile and chuckle over about something Trump did. I found this to be inappropriate.

I wanted to find a picture for this Substack of Rachel Maddow to illustrate the habit she has of laughing inappropriately when discussing something serious. I looked up "Rachel Maddow laughing" and found more than I expected to in this:

Rachel Maddow laughs at white supremacists whining about money woes before Charlottesville trial

Out MSNBC host Rachel Maddow laughed at complaints from white supremacists about their upcoming trial for inciting violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Maddow also mocked the white, straight, cisgender men at their choice to represent themselves after their lawyers quit the case, saying “couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.”

The article didn't offer an opinion about her laughing about something so serious.

Last night Rachel Maddow began her show with a long explanation about Trump using a family crest which the previous owners of Mar-a-Lago left behind on a wall for his own self-agrandizement. It was off-putting to me because she sounded rather chipper and she smiled and chuckled occasionally as she went on.

She told about his new challenge coin. Wikipedia explains what they are, but in brief, they have been used by many other presidents and by the military to show appreciation to individuals.

Bottom: Trump's coin with the crest and Donald J. Trump on it.

At least she didn't waste time, like I am about to do, telling about his 2017 challenge coin. This is from The NY Times:

What’s big and shiny and gold and features Donald J. Trump’s name splashed across the front? No, it’s not a new development on the West Side of Manhattan. It’s the redesigned presidential challenge coin.

A custom dating back 20 years, presidential challenge coins have traditionally been handed out to service members in commemoration of special achievements and milestones. President Trump’s coin, which many saw on Friday for the first time, is unmistakably different from its predecessors.

Gone is the national motto, E pluribus unum, meaning “out of many, one.” In its place appears the president’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” which the administration has also used on official White House documents.

This would have been approprate if the segment was merely about Trump's narcissim. Besides, his stealing the family crest is old news. The only thing new is his putting it on a coin. Here's a BBC article about it from 2017:

The title of this segment was "Trump makes laughingstock of America with repeated embarrassments in early days of term." His being the laughingstock of the world doesn't mean we should be laughing at him. You can watch the segment here.

She talked about his saying that Hezbolah used condoms in making bombs and quizically asking just how this would work. She talked about his saying that the US sent military troops into Calfornia to turn on the water, and other things not at all related to his appropriation of the crest of another family. She talked about how Trump thought Spain was a member of the BRIC nation group. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. All this is fodder for discussion, but it had nothing to do with the family crest story.

Rachel frequently begins her show with a backstory, but it always connects to what she then goes on to address. This one didn't. It just gave her something light to talk about.

Rachel never made the connection between Trump's wanting to have a family crest and an aspect of his dark and dangerous personality. She could have made the connection by doing this.

Better yet...

... she could have explained that demonstrates that Trump is an exemplar of someone manifesting all of the traits of The Dark Triad. The triad is narcissism, psychopathology, and Machiavellianism. These traits have been described as occuring together in a malevolent way. I won't waste space going further into this here since you can look it up on Wikipedia.

Click to enlarge image

I have never seen Rachel Maddow address the psychopathology of Trump. On the other hand, Lawrence O'Donnell regularly has mental health professionals on his show addressing this subject.

Recently he had psychoanalyst Lance Dodes on. This was just after Trump announced his desire, or threat, to take over Greenland. You can watch the segment here.

O'Donnell previously had both Dodes and psychologist John Gartner, the founder of Duty to Warn, on the show.

Rachel Maddow came back to doing a five night a week show to cover the first 100 days of Trump's presidency with great fanfare on MSNBC.

I see from the MSNBC website that she went on to discuss Trump going too far in his zeal to dismantle the federal government and interviewing Tim Walz. I don't know whether those segements were worth watching because when she went to commercial after 25 minutes we went back to watching "The Night Agent" on Netflix.

This is the second Substack I've written expressing dismay that Rachel sometimes takes things too lightly. Read it all here.

I wrote, among other things, the following:

I don't want to pick on Rachel Maddow in particular, but she seems to be the worst offender. Others, like Lawrence O'Donnell, Michelle Wallace, and Ali Velshi, report on Trump and what he is doing with gravity. But Rachel seems to have a kind of nervous reaction sometimes, not all of the time, when she laughs or chuckles when reporting on Trump and his cadre.

There is nothing remotely amusing about Trump and about what he is doing. He is hell-bent on turning the country into a ruthless dictatorship as soon as possible. Nobody on MSNBC should crack a smile when they talk about him even if they are reporting on some of his faux pas.

I am open to considering that Rachel's approach is acceptable just because, however she comes across, she gets under Trump's thin skin. I measure this possiblity against how it effects her audience. I think of the impact Walter Chronkite had when he came out against the VietNam War.

It is time for Rachel to say she isn't going to crack so much as a hint of a smile until the menace of MAGA is gone.

I think the peril of Trump will begin to sink in. It may take more reporting on children cowering in fear and crying when ICE agents manhandle their parents who are in chains when they are loaded onto airplanes.

Rereading this, written just five days ago, I realize that the actions Trump has taken since then demonstrate that he is hellbent on riding roughshod over democracy. In his fervor to get revenge on his enemies as he demands alligence from the GOP lest they, too, become his enemies, he makes no secret of the fact that he wants to become a ruthless dictator. Forget the "day one" crap and the lie about not knowing about Project 2025. This is his plan.

I expect more from Rachel Maddow. I think her lead-in last night was basically shtick. Chuckle, chuckle, so Trump is a self-aggrandizing asshole. Yeah, we know that, but he's an asshole that has nominated somone to be FBI director who, as a wrote about yesterday, wants to put you in prison.

I've given up on the "Morning Joe" crew. They or their producers insist on spending time talking about sports and having entertainment segments on. The other morning they had a relevant discussion about Trump and then had John Larrouqutte on talking about the revival of "Night Court." That's when we tuned in to CNN.

What is happening to the couunty is, as the sayings go, as serious as a heart attack or a cancer diagnosis. Now it is time for Rachel Maddow to get deadly serious.

I post my Substacks (formerly blogs) on several platforms. They are on Substack where, if you want to submit your email, you can be notified of all new blog posts. They are on HalBrown.org. They are also on Stressline.org I also post them on Medium because this enables them to be easily found on internet searches.