Rachel Maddow said she is “worried” that Donald Trump’s return to the presidency could mean she may wind up in “camps” intended to house illegal immigrants.
The MSNBC prime time host told CNN on Monday that she was “worried about the country broadly if we put someone in power who is openly avowing that he plans to build camps to hold millions of people, and to ‘root out’ what he’s described in subhuman terms as his ‘enemy from within’.”
Maddow added: “For that matter, what convinces you that these massive camps he’s planning are only for migrants? So, yes, I’m worried about me — but only as much as I’m worried about all of us.”
Recent public opinion polls show Trump edging out incumbent President Joe Biden in several key swing states — fueling trepidation among Democrats and their supporters that the GOP presumptive nominee will unleash a campaign of retribution against his political enemies.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) recently told podcaster Kara Swisher that she “wouldn’t be surprised if this guy (Trump) threw me in jail.”
Maddow on Monday predicted that Trump would deploy the military to round up undocumented migrants.
“When Trump invokes the Insurrection Act to deploy the US military against civilians on his first day in office, do you think he then rescinds the order on day two?” Maddow asked.
Maddow was alluding to Trump’s plan to institute a massive crackdown on illegal immigration which would reportedly entail wholesale roundups of undocumented people and the construction of detention camps.
When asked by TIME Magazine last month whether he would build migrant detention camps, the former president said he “would not rule out anything” though he added “there wouldn’t be that much of a need for them” since “we’re going to be moving them out.”
In the TIME interview, Trump, who has been indicted by the Justice Department as well as Democratic district attorneys in Georgia and New York, said that President Joe Biden “would be prosecuted for 20 different acts.”
Trump said that if the Supreme Court rules that a president “doesn’t get immunity,” then Biden “will be prosecuted for all of his crimes, because he’s committed many crimes.”
Maddow was asked by CNN whether she was “worried that you could be a target” given the fact that she is “one of [Trump’s] most notable critics on television.”
She responded that “there’s a little bit of head-in-the-sand complacency” that Trump “intends to go after individual people he has already singled out.”
Maddow also warned that those who side with Trump could also end up persecuted.
“It also seems pretty clear that some people in politics might think they’ll be on the safe side — that they might even benefit from it — if they side with Trump,” she said.
“Ask Mike Pence about how that works out in the end.”
Pence’s relationship with Trump ruptured after the then-vice president refused to interfere with congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Trump told TIME that he doesn’t consider illegal immigrants “civilians” because “these are people that aren’t legally in our country.”
“This is an invasion of our country,” the former president said. “An invasion like probably no country has ever seen before.”
The Post has sought comment from Maddow, Biden and Trump.
