Transcript

(drum beating)

I'm Keith Olbermann, and this is The Resistance.

The first, perhaps the only international organization

of any kind to congratulate Trump on his Muslim ban

in sheep's clothing was so-called Islamic State,

ISIS, the terrorists.

It sent him no bouquets.

It issued no press releases.

It did not have to.

It has been celebrating him, and this plan

which almost certainly instigate

the deaths of American citizens,

since the night of the election.

It, unlike so many of us, believed he would

do what he said he would do,

and it could not be happier.

From Buzzfeed News,

ISIS also sees Trump as an ideal enemy

for propaganda purposes,

the former and current members of the group said,

believing that his campaign's heated rhetoric

about Muslims will help the extremist group

with recruitment by reinforcing its central narrative

that America and the West are at war with Islam.

Of course, Trump has just done Islamic State's work for it.

What better recruitment tool could there be?

What better instigation to homegrown terrorists

throughout the world to rise could there be?

What better confirmation that all the terrorists

insane, immoral rationalizations

for their blood lust could there be?

The United States of America invoking exactly

the kind of action that Islamic State always said it would.

An intelligent 10-year old could tell you,

could tell Trump,

that what he enacted last Friday,

criticized by John McCain and Lindsey Graham,

as a recruitment tool for terrorists,

criticized by the organization of the infamous Koch brothers

as the wrong approach,

an intelligent 10-year old could tell you

that the last thing the new Banana Republican government

of the United States would want to do

if it wanted to prevent radical Islamic terrorism,

would be to ban Muslims simply because they are Muslims.

Since it was, in fact, the first thing

the new Banana Republican government

of the United States did do,

logic and simple common sense offer

only two possible explanations.

Since it is the greatest possible

gift to ISIS for recruitment,

for confirmation, for rationalization,

for instigating terrorist acts, maybe here in America,

it must either be that Trump does not understand

what will almost inevitably follow,

or that he does understand what

will almost inevitably follow.

Why would an American want that?

Not an American president,

why would any American

deliberately do anything to give terrorists

a rationalization to commit terrorism in America?

We need look only to what happened

the last time a Republican presidential administration,

and the Republican Party, were confronted by

large-scale terrorism here in 2001.

For a time that administration grieved,

and that Party was solemn,

and that administration was somber,

and that Party promised unity,

and both called for bipartisanship.

And within a year, the Republicans were using 9/11

as a phony pretext for war in Iraq,

and for bullying dissenters,

and for creating an extra level of bureaucracy

with the Germanic sounding invocation of the quote,

homeland.

And running political television advertisements against

an incumbent democratic senator,

a triple-amputee Vietnam war vet named Max Cleland.

Television advertisements using images

of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.

And outing a CIA operative because

her former ambassador husband would not

back up their lies to the United Nations.

And manipulating terror arrests,

and color-code warnings when,

and even the first Homeland Security Secretary,

Tom Ridge, later admitted this is how he read it,

manipulating terrorism arrests and warnings

when political fortunes turned against them,

and towards the Democrats.

What was all that for?

Was it to make this country safer,

or was it simply to make Republican possession

of the White House safer?

Is there anybody left who really thinks

it was the former, and not the latter?

It is instructive that one of the most chilling figures

from the Bush administration,

the Vice President, Dick Cheney,

condemned a Muslim ban within hours of Trump

first proposing it in December 2015.

It goes, Cheney said then, quote,

Against everything we stand for and believe in.

Even Cheney understood that

while he argued for stronger vetting

of refugees and immigrants.

Still, even Cheney understood that.

Trump, and the anti-American louts around him,

like propaganda Barbie, Conway,

and the Holocaust diminishers, Bannon and Priebus,

and the spineless, silent, power-mad Republicans

enabling him like Paul Ryan,

either do not understand the implications,

the instigations, of what they've now done.

Either do not see how ISIS can exploit this,

or they do understand the implications and instigations,

and the ISIS exploitation.

It must be one thing or the other.

If it is the former,

if none of them understand that Trump

has made this country seem as evil as ISIS

tells its cult members we are,

then none of them has the minimum

intelligence required to vote,

let alone to lead a great nation.

But if it is the latter,

and they do see the instigation for what it is,

then they are prepared for that outcome.

Terrorism somewhere blamed upon Trump.

Now, why would they choose that?

Why would you take an action which itself

forces you to take a second action,

namely preparing for a terrorist attack?

What happens next?

Well, what happened before?

When large-scale terrorism last presented itself,

the last Republican administration exploited the horror,

began to play with the fears of 285 million Americans

to try to consolidate its power here permanently.

So, a thought experiment, if you will,

use the past, and what we know of Trump,

Trump with less of a guiding moral force

or understanding of the value of each human life

than even Dick Cheney has,

what would Trump do in the aftermath

of a kind of immediate, genuine, heart-rending,

tangible fear and sorrow that smothered

this nation last in 2001?

Would he, like George W. Bush, rationalize

a pointless war somewhere unconnected to events?

Would he, like George W. Bush, seek to blame Democrats

for a lack of preparedness?

Would he, like George W. Bush,

begin pushing back against freedom of the press?

Would he, like George W. Bush, begin denouncing critics

as terrorist sympathizers?

Would he, like George W. Bush, try to make

his re-election seemingly guaranteed?

Would he go beyond George W. Bush,

and blame the judges who opposed his illegal order?

Would he go beyond George W. Bush,

to make dissent, and protest, illegal or impossible?

Would he go beyond George W. Bush,

and say I alone was right about terror, and Muslims,

and banning them, and henceforth,

my judgment should never be questioned?

And as you ask yourself those questions,

ask yourself one more.

How many of those things has Trump already started to do?

Resist.

Peace.