On election night, Maddow gave an impassioned missive about the transition from democracy to tyranny, and what that looks like. She also conjured up visions of the American people rising up in resistance, but gave little sense of how that would manifest.

Nonetheless, she shared important lessons from history where other nations pivoted from a system of checks-and-balances to one that centers solely around a “strongman”. She urges us to beware of these shifts within core sectors of government and society:

• The Military: Use of military force against the civilian population of the country
• The Media: The ‘Fourth Estate’ becomes accepting of an executive-only order of government and becomes its mouthpiece
• The Legislature: Efforts are made to strip Congress of any real power and make it a “just-for-show institution”
• The Judiciary: Diminishment of the rule of law
• Civil Society: Overtake of culture and anything grass roots in order to expand dictatorship to totalitarianism

Some analysis minimized her speech, but also correctly cited the viewership loss by MSNBC and CNN in the wake of Trump’s election:

“Left-leaning viewers are either growing tired of progressive hysteria prompted by Mr Trump’s appointment, or growing wise to the fact that Maddow’s brand of patronizing lefty preaching does not help the Democrats to win elections.”

This has led to musings by the like of Elon Musk about buying MSNBC.

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• Full Speech: Trump win ‘gives us a really big to-do list’ to defend democracy (MSNBC)
• How Rachel Maddow is dragging MSNBC down (Yahoo! News)