Rachel Maddow Rally & Critical Thinking

Christine Merser, May 12, 2025

I’ve never been to a Trump rally. I’ve watched them. I’ve watched the frenetic, adoring, frenzied, mindless cheering, which begins long before he’s even finished half the sentence, so it’s not based on the content of what he’s saying, but rather the energy in the stadium.

I’ve watched the press interview MAGA people afterward. They really can’t even give a cohesive, informed sentence about what was said, what the man said he was going to do, had done, or wanted to do. It shocks me every time. And that they don’t know they don’t know.

Watching them, I thought the events were scary as shit. I thought it they were cult-like. And I don’t understand it. They don’t seem to question anything he says. I just knew I should be afraid of it.

Lambs to the slaughter, maybe?

Rachel Maddow has a new book out, Prequel. I haven’t read it yet, but I did listen to her podcast series about the McCarthy era, which is what Prequel is about. The series was amazing. It’s filled with things you had no idea existed. How about the fact that 23 congressmen and senators were Nazi informants? Yep. It shows an America that has definitely been submerged underneath our reality. And oh, what a storyteller Rachel Maddow is. One of the best. Buy it here, rather than on Amazon, where you are just enabling Jeff Bezos to dis-enable you.

Part of her book tour included an appearance in Portland, Maine, which is just a stone’s throw from where I live. A friend and I went. Full house. My people. Your people.

She came out on stage, and it was electric. Cheering, before she finished a sentence. Before anyone in the audience had time to really decipher what she was saying or whether it was worth cheering for. I took notes. I think I was the only one. I thought she was fucking brilliant. I think she is brilliant. I think she’s a great thinker, strategist, and connector of tons of ‘points’ that we might miss. I think she’s an even better storyteller.

Her cadence is perfect. And she is so damn likable. And all of a sudden, from the moment she opened her mouth, every single person in there was filled with hope and purpose and inspiration and gratitude toward the self-effacing way she presents her part in all of this. For the look on her face, the tone of her voice.

But I didn’t agree with everything she said. She expressed confidence in overcoming the challenges we’re now facing and that the mistakes they have made will be catastrophic to them in the end. (Watch the one-minute video above—her wrap-up.) A lot of her confidence and thinking is based on history. I am not so sure. I think this is a moment unlike any in history. Even setting aside technology, which alone makes this a once-in-a-lifetime situation, I don’t think anyone has ever gotten this far with a country as important as the United States in placing a fascist in power.

She says we will win. She says they’ve acted in the first hundred days somewhat stupidly. “Stupid” is my word, not hers—I can’t remember what word she used.

While that’s true, she seems to believe they’ll continue to be this stupid. I don’t think Donald Trump is a smart man, but I don’t think he’s in charge either. I’m not sure who is, but I suspect it’s the masterminds of Project 2025—men who’ve been working on this for twenty years. Trump’s idiocy may have set them back a bit in terms of rolling it out in six months, which was what they thought they had to do to win. But I don’t think it’s game over.

She explained that at the beginning of this type of takeover, people are just relieved or tired, and they don’t want to look at anything too closely. So they let things go by. If you don’t establish total control in those first few months, rebellion can make you fail. She feels that we the people have stood up well enough and shown that we’re not going to let them rip immigrants off sidewalks in our neighborhoods by masked men without credentials or paperwork. She cited five examples of people who had to be returned because of public outrage. What she didn’t do is cite the hundreds of others who have not been returned.

And while they’ve had a rough start, they will get better too. And I’m not sure we will.

So while I want to believe her, and I understand the foundation of her premise, I’m not sure I feel as positive as she does.

My friend Christina was with me. I told her as we talked about it all on the way home that I don’t want to be negative. I want to build on her ideas. I want to believe in them. Because what else is there? The only option we have now is to never give up. And she certainly presents the best roadmap I’ve heard for how to proceed. So I’m there and will be writing about what she suggests this week.

And God, I was happy to be there. She brought feelings out in me that have been submerged since the day the man took office. I was so happy to welcome those feelings back into my soul.

But today, I want to focus on something else.

I was also disquieted sitting there. It took us a while - maybe 15 or 20 minutes - to get out of the building. I was listening to the conversations around me. Probably 25 or 30 different ones. And all people were talking about was how they felt after being in there. Not one person was talking to the person they came with about what she said. Just about how she made them feel.

No one was recounting her points and making their own. Or challenging them. Or supporting them with their own thoughts and ideas. Christina and I did it all the way home, but I would bet not many others did.

Where was the critical thinking?

Shouldn’t the point be to take in the information, and then discuss it with others, and with yourself, and determine what’s right about it, what’s wrong with it, and how you can build on it? Or maybe even reject it? Or send her a letter saying, “You forgot this particular situation,” or “What about that?”

I don’t think there was any discourse in the room. And I don’t think there was going to be when people got home.

Bottom line is I was at a Trump rally, and totally invested in it—only it wasn’t Trump. It was Rachel Maddow. And I believe every word she says.

I think we are so reprogrammed to take in information from the sources we want to believe, and not process it ourselves or evaluate it, that someone like Rachel Maddow, who is probably one of the great orators of our time (but orates as a journalist, not as a politician), comes across our plate and we treat her like the second coming.

We are lambs to the slaughter.

Rachel Maddow was not leading me to a slaughter—that’s for sure. Or at least, that’s what I believe. But it’s the process that should be disturbing. It’s the lack of challenge. And I realize now that she got to speak for one hour, from 9 to 10, each of the first 100 days, and sway people’s points of view, without any real debate about what she’s saying.

I’m pretty sure she is the most persuasive human I’ve ever come across.

And I think she’s an honorable, wonderful person. But what do I know? I don’t know her. The only fact I know for sure is that she’s a really good storyteller. Her timing is impeccable. The stories she weaves in, self-effacing and comforting. Like how, the day after she finished her hundred days and was going back to one day a week, she cleaned out her linen closet with her girlfriend, Susan. What was she doing? She was presenting herself as non-threatening. No one to challenge. Who challenges someone who’s cleaning out their linen closet after dedicating 100 days of their life to explaining to you what’s going on?

She’s funny. God, humor works. You can sway a lot of people with humor.

Again, I put this out there not as a negative about Rachel Maddow—because I do sit on the same side as she does. I put it out here as a negative about us.

Throughout the evening, people kept yelling out, “Run for president!” and everybody cheered. Each time, she laughed and said no. The last time someone said it, she went a little further. She said if she ran for president of The Rachel Maddow Show, they wouldn’t elect her. If she ran for president of her house with her girlfriend Susan, she wouldn’t win. She said she’s not a good runner of things. I actually believe her.

And she said it so cutely that everybody just cheered. Watch it in the video above and you will see what I mean. But really, shouldn’t someone have reflected on the fact that that room would’ve elected her 100–0 to President of the United States because we liked the way she made us feel, not because she’d exhibited credentials for the job?

I’m going to write about some of the things she said that are worth consideration. But I wanted to start here because I realize now how very detrimental the way we’re learning has become. We have stopped thinking for ourselves, and it’s how things appear that makes the most impact. All of us. Not just them.

You can inspire me. But if I stop thinking about what you’re actually saying, and just take it in as fact because of who’s saying it or how they’re saying it, we will never get out of this mess.

I think Rachel Maddow is fabulous. And I think we need her. I also don’t think she would want you to adore her or fanatically support every word that comes out of her mouth without question. That’s certainly not how she behaves toward others. I think she questions everything.

Just a little food for thought on a Monday morning.