Rachel Maddow took a few minutes during her show Monday night to break down some of the fundamental differences between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns and bemoan the media’s baffling desire to pretend the two candidates are somehow on the same playing field.
“They are not the same kind of candidates. They are not doing the same kinds of things,” Maddow said, citing the more than 700 national security and former military officials who recently signed a letter endorsing Harris.
And on the other hand?
“Here’s Trump promising that if he’s president, he’s going to find where California is hiding its huge secret faucet that they used to dump all the rainwater into the ocean,” Maddow said. Even Canadians, who are legendarily nice, say Trump’s insistence that water shortage issues could be easily fixed by ending environmental protections is “uninformed.”
Maddow then pointed to Harris’ plan to help working- and middle-class families with an expanded child tax credit.
“Here, on the other hand, is Donald Trump saying he’s going to abolish the Department of the Interior,” Maddow said, then paused. “For some reason. Nobody has bothered asking him why. Why do you want to abolish the Department of the Interior?” Anyone wondering won’t be surprised to learn that very idea can be read about in the anti-democracy Project 2025.
Maddow also highlighted Trump’s many promises to punish his critics using executive powers.
Her obvious conclusion?
“One of these things is not like the other.”
The fact that House Republicans largely ignored Trump’s recent demands to shut down the government “would have led the news for days,” Maddow explains. But the media is all business as usual “while Trump instead races toward Election Day, rolling out a new scam, some new money-making effort to squeeze money out of his fans almost every day.”
This includes everything from cryptocurrency, to Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara releasing a new music video, to former first lady Melania Trump’s bizarre social media campaign trying to drum up press for her upcoming memoir.
“Imagine if Kamala Harris was, like, rolling out a mortgage scam and some commemorative trinkets right now?” Maddow says. “Not for the campaign, but just to, like, get her and Doug some money.”
The bar for Trump is so low it might be impossible to find.
