Michael Beschloss Says GOP Victory in Midterms Will Mean ‘Our Children Will Be Arrested and Conceivably Killed’
MSNBC presidential historian Michael Beschloss on Wednesday night warned that if Republican candidates win their races next week, American democracy and the free press could end, historians may no longer exist, and “our children” could all die at the hands of a “brutal authoritarian system.”
President Joe Biden said in his Wednesday night speech that, in the upcoming midterms, “democracy itself is “at stake,” a message that MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and much of the media have been repeating for months. Hayes played clips from the speech, including the president saying that electing certain Republicans is a “path to chaos” — a comment with which Hayes clearly agreed.
“Whether we take that path to chaos, whether we continue to march down, it is one of the major choices — if not the major choice — that voters face this coming Tuesday,” said Hayes.
Biden delivered his speech about democracy and political violence at the peak of a week of condemnations directed at Republican rhetoric for demonizing political opponents. Beschloss joined Hayes to analyze that speech, which he says precedes a midterm that will decide whether the president’s political opponents get to institute a brutal, child-murdering authoritarian dictatorship.
“We could be six days away from losing our rule of law,” the historian declared.
Beschloss compared Biden to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt as he continued to build to his crescendo, in which he argued that in just six days, America could see the beginning of the end of it all.
“A historian 50 years from now, if historians are allowed to write in this country and if there are still free publishing houses and a free press, which I’m not certain of,” he said. “But if that is true, a historian will say, what was at stake tonight and this week was the fact whether we will be a democracy in the future, whether our children will be arrested and conceivably killed.”
“We’re on the edge of a brutal authoritarian system, and it could be a week away,” he said, adding:
Well, [Biden] was absolutely candid and he was absolutely right, because, as you know, Chris, six nights from now, we could all be discussing violence all over this country. There are signs that that may happen. May God forbid. That losers will be declared winners by fraudulent election officers or secretary of state candidates or governors or state legislatures.
We could be six days away from losing our rule of law and losing a situation where we have elections that we all can rely on. You know, those are the foundation stones of a democracy.
So if Biden had gone on the air tonight and said, biggest thing we have to worry about is, you know, marginal tax rate or something like that. Well, it is important. But what significant presidents do — I think you will agree, we both we write history, you and I.
1868, Lincoln didn’t say, biggest issue is land grant colleges, although he felt strongly, he said the country can’t survive half-slave or half-free.
1940, Franklin Roosevelt didn’t say, you know, the biggest thing I’m worried about is farm policy. Farm policy was important to him, but what he did say was never before, since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, has America been in such danger.
Joe Biden is saying the same thing tonight. And a historian 50 years from now, if historians are allowed to write in this country and if there are still free publishing houses and a free press, which I’m not certain of. But if that is true, a historian will say, what was at stake tonight and this week was the fact whether we will be a democracy in the future, whether our children will be arrested and conceivably killed. We’re on the edge of a brutal authoritarian system, and it could be a week away.
Watch the clip above, via All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC.
