The Best People with Nicolle Wallace
Rachel Maddow: Born to Dilly Dally, Forced to Fight Fascism
Mon, 2 Jun 2025
On the second episode of “The Best People with Nicolle Wallace,” Nicolle’s “phone-a-friend" Rachel Maddow reflects on the weird reality of this moment: after tumbling over the edge of the cliff of Trumpism, how do Americans navigate the canyon below? They muse about “shirtless” Vladimir Putin’s embarrassing relationship with President Trump, why Americans aren’t buying that immigrants are the enemy, and why Rachel finds hope in good old-fashioned protest. Want to listen to this show without ads? Sign up for MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts.
Chapter 1: What does 'born to dilly-dally, forced to fight fascism' mean?
A friend sent me a meme the other day. It was like a Paddington meme, and the caption was, born to dilly-dally, forced to fight fascists.
Chapter 2: How does Rachel Maddow feel about the current political climate?
You had me at dilly-dally. Hi, everyone. It's Nicole Wallace. You may know me from Deadline White House. This is our new podcast called The Best People. Rachel Maddow is our North Star here at MSNBC. She also happens to be as funny and smart and supportive off camera as she is on. So for this episode of The Best People, we dig into the news, shirtless Vladimir Putin, and all sorts of other things.
This is The Best People with Nicole Wallace. And this is my dear friend, Rachel Maddow. So, Rachel, thank you for doing this. I know you're more than very, very, very busy, but you are truly, I don't know why I feel I'm about to get weepy, but you're not just one of the best people in my life. You're one of my closest friends in this world.
You are everyone's TV friend, but I feel like you get to be my real world friend. And I have to say, the last six months, I know where I was when I called you in all my scary moments. There's a part on my run where I run with the baby, and I would have to run far enough that she'd be asleep, but I would pull off in this spot.
And as the election was coming to an end, and the stories that we covered became so real, and in my scary moments, you were my lifeline and the person that I've always called. And I feel now like we're doing the actual work and I feel a little less scared. Yeah. But I wonder how you're feeling.
And I feel like for me, you're the person that got my head back in the game and reminded me not just why we're doing this, but that we're not doing it alone. We have you.
Well, I mean, we're all trying to do a version of the same thing. But I feel like the thing that has been helpful for me in talking to you through this whole process is... It's just kind of a reminder that we've been talking about and worrying about the edge of the cliff. for so long. But then it turns out time is linear and it goes forward and that interacts with that other metaphor.
And as time goes forward, we did get closer to the edge of the cliff and we have now gone off the cliff and it turns out time is still linear and still goes forward and the sun still rises and you still have to do stuff. And so now we have experienced what the edge of the cliff is like. And what it's like to be in midair. And we are now in the canyon on the other side of the cliff.
And we are seeing what life is like there. And it's just, you know, I am your friend who sends you weird country music songs. This is like a Robert Earl Keene moment for us, like the road goes on forever and the party never ends. It turns out. Like in the middle of a fascist takeover, what happens is there's a fascist takeover and you have to keep still doing the work.
Then you are a person who's fighting an existing fascist authoritarian government and not just warning about it and trying to avert it from happening. Like you just you have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. There isn't this isn't a play. This isn't a movie. This is our lives. And as long as we're here, we have stuff to do.
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Chapter 3: What insights does Rachel Maddow share about protests?
Like, maybe Tiffany Trump thought her father-in-law was a billionaire, and I don't know. But he's got to prove himself, right, because that was humiliating. And so he's connected with the, like, oil-soaked warlords of Benghazi to, like, apparently do deals for the U.S. government to accept business.
And they went so far as having people loaded on buses and ready to go before a court intervened there. But now what's the new thing they say they're going to do in Libya? They say they are going to like the phrase that is the most dangerous and worst collection of words in the English language. relocate the civilian population of Gaza. And where are they going to put the Palestinians from Gaza?
They're going to put them in Libya. That's the new U.S. proposal that the Palestinians are going to be forcibly taken away from their land and moved to Libya. That's the way the U.S. government is operating right now. And do they want that story told? No, they don't. And so that makes me very interested in that story.
Well, I also think if you go to the most fundamental thing that they're doing, they're moving human beings.
Yeah.
And I think if you pump the brakes right there, what the public thinks it's for is deporting back to home countries people who are adjudicated criminals. New York Times-Siena's got like 87% of people that are for that. That's largely what Obama did. That is not where any of the time and energy has been spent.
And so all of the movement of human beings to countries from which they are not, for crimes that they can't prove were committed, for people that it's not even clear they presented evidence to anyone. I mean, I just find it all so surreal. I find the fact that everyone seems... It doesn't feel like a partisan statement to say due process is a thing we're still for.
And I, like you, have driven by some of the protests on some of the big weekend protest days. And to see people holding up the signs for due process, like, made my, you know, democracy-worried heart sing. But the other piece of it is the movement of humans. Like, I'm not sure that we should be moving humans anywhere.
I'm not sure that any part of our politics ever contemplated anything other than deporting adjudicated criminals back to their home countries.
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Chapter 4: How do Americans perceive the Trump administration's actions?
Well, I think, I mean, to the people enjoying the other things they're doing, I think the people that voted for him because they thought they would understand the other things that he was doing made a bad bet on the economy. And I mean, I'm I'm so, you know, like a moth to the flame. to the extraordinary abuse of power of moving humans around.
I mean, I really, the first story I read about the group of young men sent to Venezuela has just stuck in my gut and not in an everyday sense. I mean, the idea that an innocent, you know, gay hairdresser is sitting there still, it's been two months. I mean, how is he? You know, is he okay? Is he alive? Has he had a phone call? Did he do anything wrong? No one's ever... So to me, those stories...
just sort of wrought my faith in humanity. That he did this and that people are okay with it, I mean, just makes me... Question everything.
But I don't think people are OK with it is the thing that I mean, like maybe there are some people who get a transgressive thrill from seeing the kind of cruelty that they're displaying and making propaganda out of. But I actually think that there's a lot more people in polling bears this out who think it's both pointless and wrong.
Yeah.
Like I just think about that Chuck Grassley town hall in Iowa.
Who knew him? Who knew Chuck? I mean, so he's like not some, you know, Democratic activist.
No.
Who's his constituent? He's his constituent. You got to get that guy back from El Salvador. Chuck, what are you doing? Chuck, I'm pissed. Bring him back.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of Trump's relationship with foreign governments?
Then I think we are. And I actually think they banked wrong on that. And it means they have miscalculated their amount of political capital, what it would take to replenish it and the kind of backlash that they're getting and loss of support that they're having to endure.
I feel like you had the most clarity of our table family, you know, Chris, me, you know, our group of where the country was, sort of the foul mood democracies were in post-COVID. And so in a lot of ways, you saw this coming. Maybe you and Chris, I feel like, maybe saw this as a really distinct possibility. So in terms of what you were sort of prepared for going into November this
what you covered, sort of the body of work of 100 days. You've done, what, five live events. What do you hear in what's happening right now that makes you feel good?
The thing that I didn't expect that really wowed me, that gave me a big emotional boost like I had to kind of collect myself moment was I talked at all the events that I did about protests and about what I was just saying about people standing up for immigrants in particular. And at a couple of events, I said, you know, has anybody here done any sort of in-person protest?
Have you gone out and held a sign somewhere? And a lot of people, you know, plotted. Yeah, I did. And I was like, oh, wow, like a significant portion of people. And I said, and When you did that, how did it make you feel? And the roar of cheers and applause. Like, I'm getting tears thinking about it right now. Just this wave of, like, yes, this felt good. Yeah.
This was the thing that's happened to me over these hundred days that... felt great and made me want to do more of it. Like I, you know, standing up and holding a sign and being out in the rain and hoping for people to honk for you and have the honk not accompanied by a middle finger and all the rest of it. Some of it sounds good. Some of it doesn't.
But like the overwhelming reaction from people who are saying like, I did, I put my body out there. I did something physically and it felt good and I want to do more of it. That human emotion around that to me is still, obviously, as you can see right now, very moving. And that, to me, is not just moving at a personal level.
If you look at the political science around what it takes to stop a dictatorship, to stop an authoritarian takeover, to retrieve a democracy, the movement against the authoritarians has to be sustainable and has to grow over time.
Mm-hmm.
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Chapter 6: How are immigrants being treated in current policies?
And I think that means that sort of all systems go in terms of how big the resistance can get, how sustained it can be, and how broad it might ultimately get. I mean, when we see protests in...
you know idaho and alabama and texas and little rock i saw them on your show yeah yeah yeah when you see that over and it's not just one it's over and over again that's telling you something about not only how big it is already but how big it might get we're gonna sneak in a quick break here when we come back we'll have more with rachel maddow back in a moment
I miss you on every night. And like a lot of people, I love your coverage of the protests. And I mean, I think I said this to you privately. We'll never know who watched your show and saw people in the next town doing it and so went out and did it in her town and brought her kids, right? I mean, it's the whole reason to be, you know, Y2 Podcast.
Like, people need to feel connected to you and to hear... the longer thoughts, I think, without the commercial breaks. And I wonder how you feel your coverage of the protests is part of that circuit of people feeling like they're doing something that they're doing in the next town and the next town and the next town and the next.
I mean, I guess you're right that you never know what effect... it has to know that other people are doing something. Like, does that make you more or less likely to do it? I don't know.
But for me, the reason that I started to cover the protests early on is that I felt like we need to do all we can to take the temperature of the people in this moment because it's not the Democratic Party and it's not Joe Biden and it's not, you know, the pundit class that's going to make the decision here about whether or not we accede to this takeover. Right. It's going to be the people.
And where are the people at? Well, hey, look. Like, I think the very first thing I covered was that it was somewhere in New England and it was still snowy, like it was January still, I think. Like some, you know, it's always little old ladies who start it because they are the pulsing, beating heart of American democracy. Yes. Turned up at a Tesla charging station in some little town in New England.
And it was the first protests that I think that we covered. The first thing that I think I'd seen, certainly the first one focused on Elon Musk and Tesla. And it made me wonder like, oh, right, there's Tesla infrastructure, Tesla charging stations and Tesla dealerships and stuff. everywhere, all over the country.
And that's a potential locus for people without having to travel to a government site. Like, where are Tesla charging stations? They're like at convenient interchanges. You know, there are places that are easy for people to get to. Like, those could be a locus for people to show themselves. in terms of how they're feeling here. So we should start looking around and seeing that.
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Chapter 7: What role do protests play in democracy?
LESLIE KENDRICK And I think we are where you think we are, right? I think we went over the cliff. And I actually think the worst brand in three years for a law firm trying to recruit – I mean, all the law firms are going to want the smartest law students, right? Like, that's not going to change. Where are the smartest law students going to want to go? Are they going to want to go to a firm that –
did a bullshit deal on Truth Social with an autocratic leader. A handshake deal with nothing. Not even a handshake. Like a truth, like a post on a medium that may not even exist. Like there might not even, where would you even search the archives in 15 years?
And you had to work it out with Boris. Correct.
Like, I know Boris, like, he's got to be like, how'd this happen to me? Like, I'm the guy doing the deals on True Social that brought America's legal profession to its knees.
Holy cow. The guy who was pushed out of the transition, this transition for allegedly charging people money. Cash money to get appointments in the Trump administration. To get them confirmed by the Senate.
Like, it's so bananas. So, like, I don't think that we're going to be saved by Brad Karp. But I do think that the freshman law students at Columbia and Harvard, I mean, whatever the best laws, I think they're going to solve it for us when they graduate and Brad Karp's like, come work for us. And they're like, hell no. Yeah. I'm going to go work for Perkins Coie who didn't fold like a cheap tent.
And I think that the brands that survive and the brands that thrive being associated with democracy has to become part of it.
But do the business guys come too?
I don't know. I mean, I think I think that's up to them. I think if their bet is that capitalism thrives in an autocracy, like we should go on a field trip. Like where? Yeah. Where does that happen? And like, here's the other thing that I feel like you had to be a political reporter to explain to a business leader. Like, so you do everything. It's like the law firms.
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Chapter 8: How can individuals contribute to political change?
And that's just—there's a lot of people like that in history, and there's a reason we don't remember their names. It's because they become irrelevant. They're vessels that are then used by authoritarians for as long as they're convenient, and then they're humiliated and discarded. And so I think what's going on with Marco Rubio is, among other things, I think it's the end of his ascendance.
Like, who would— Right. Right. Right. Raise your hand if you think that was for real. Right. It's not going to happen.
To keep J.D. Vance on his toes, yeah. Oh, God.
So I just, yeah, I can't say it's sad because Rubio is doing so much damage. I mean, there's going to be So many deaths on the ledger under the State Department and USAID. Just the toll, the human toll of what he will have not just acceded to, but accelerated with his playing a role in it is going to be something that will go down in history just in terms of the body count.
So I don't feel sad, but I do feel like we can stop worrying about Marco Rubio's political trajectory. Like, this is it. It's done.
I mean, I would add Ukraine to it, like that he sat in there while Trump ambushed and humiliated President Zelensky. When Rubio wasn't just someone who McConnell had to bring along on like Ukraine aid, he was a champion for Zelensky. I mean, what they did to Zelensky is, you know, literally switch sides in the middle of a war. I don't know that the country...
ever recovers from that damage that they've done.
Yeah. It's also been, I feel like, I don't really know what to make of this warning. I'm about to mention the name Putin. I'm sorry. I'm just about to hear it comes. Everybody brace yourself. I know it's weird to hear me say it. But like to see Trump So abjectly and publicly humiliated by Putin over and over and over again around the Ukraine stuff like, oh, stop it in 24 hours.
And Vladimir, stop this. And, you know, there must be a ceasefire before talks. Oh, no, you want talks first? Okay, talks first then. You know, doing the multiple calls, right? Yeah. personally doing the call, sending Steve Witkoff over and over in there again. Like, eventually, Putin's going to have Witkoff jumping out of a cake, you know, or dancing or something.
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