Maddow warns Trump’s military moves backfiring: 'Americans don’t like being threatened'

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow warned Monday night that President Donald Trump's insistence on using physical force to try to "cow and hurt people" is about to backfire spectacularly.

Maddow began her show Monday night, pointing out that mass protests have erupted in Israel, with calls for a nationwide work stoppage.

"People marched all over Israel against their own government, demanding an end to the war in Gaza," she said, noting that some protesters set fires and blocked highways. Half a million people protested in Tel Aviv on Sunday night, she noted, the equivalent of 17 million Americans.

Trump, she said, has already had more than 5 million protesters in the United States. And more are coming, she warned.

"As Trump continues to arrogate all government power to himself, as his popularity drops further and further with the American people, as he increasingly uses physical force to try to cow and hurt people in this country — and the American public really don’t like that — the pace of protest against Trump appears to be picking up here again," she said.

Maddow pointed to a USA Today report finding anti-Trump protest numbers have hit an "all-time high."

"Higher than anything he saw at any point in his first term. Higher than anything since the huge outbreaks of thousands of protests we had in the summer of 2020 over the police killing of George Floyd," said Maddow, adding that a professor who studies protests and mass mobilization said this may just be the beginning, as Trump sent soldiers into U.S. cities.

“I would say that using the military for civil control is a real wild card here," she quoted the professor as saying. "In many cases, the move to authoritarian kinds of tactics will actually bring out more protesters.”

Maddow added, "Yes, I can see how that might work. And as of right now, Washington, D.C. is certainly showing that."

Protesters in the nation's capital unfurled a massive banner along an overpass that said, "Be brave. Demand Democracy." And thousands of soccer fans at a National Women’s Soccer League game in Washington, D.C., chanted "Free D.C.! Free D.C!"

"Day after day after day after day, the president’s military takeover of D.C. has been met with direct action, in these really big protests like the one we saw on Saturday, also in smaller ones as well," said Maddow.

She added: "You know, I don’t know if it’s related or not, but I think Americans just really don’t like being threatened with their own military. And maybe that’s the reason why two of the other U.S. cities that had really big protests against Trump this weekend were two other U.S. cities where Trump has threatened that he’s going to send the troops next."

Watch the clip below or at this link.