Lawrence: Rep. Greene’s ‘Gazpacho Police’ Rant A ‘Stunning Display Of Stupidity’

you know the c in rnc doesn't stand for committee it stands for cult it's not the republican national committee it's the republican national cult they seem to have not reached rock bottom with their statement that what happened on january 6 was normal political discourse i say this to republicans all the time take back your party from this cult is it a cult or is it stupidity and what's the difference today the cult that congressman jeffries and speaker pelosi are referring to produced two new stunning displays of stupidity one on video and another in a tweet first the video now we have nancy pelosi's gazpacho police spying on members of congress spying on the legislative work that we do spying on our staff and spying on american citizens that want to come talk to their representatives now we're all capable of misspeaking at any moment i do it with names sometimes right here on this show i recently called daniel goldman who i know very well david goldman that stuff happens the problem with marjory taylor greene is that there is no evidence that she actually knew the word gestapo when she said the word gazpacho if she knew both words and how to use them properly then what happened was just one brain cell misfiring at the wrong moment but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that marjorie taylor green is so utterly ignorant not just about nazi germany but about everything and so relentlessly stupid that she actually thinks gazpacho is the name of hitler's secret police the last part of her statement is a classic display of the cult that congressman jeffries and speaker pelosi described marjorie tiller green says that the people who attacked the capitol and beat police officers nearly to death and vowed that they were there to kill mike pence were quote this is mark this is what she said american citizens that want to come to talk to their representatives they wanted to kill mike pence they wanted to kill nancy pelosi they wanted to kill chuck schumer they wanted to kill representatives they did not want to talk to their representatives and there was this tweet today from one of the competitors for stupidest person ever elected to congress republican thomas massey i noticed it when nobel prize winning economist paul krugman framed it this way siri give me the stupidest thing anyone has ever said about healthcare thomas massey tweeted over 70 percent of americans who died with covid died on medicare and some people want medicare for all if you need an explanation of what is so profoundly stupid about that statement then you have to go back to kindergarten and start over joining us now is dr lance dodas a former assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at harvard medical school dr dotis is a contributor to the best-selling book the dangerous case of donald trump 37 psychiatrists and mental health experts assess a president dr dotis thank you very much for joining us again tonight we always appreciate it uh as we've been hearing this word cult used this week and especially after the republican national committee issued that statement calling what happened on january 6th legitimate political discourse i have been wondering at at what point we have exhausted the limits of political knowledge about this subject and and when we should be turning for you uh to your reaction to what we're seeing what could make people uh make this public call that attack on the capitol legitimate political discourse uh what has pushed nancy pelosi to the point of calling her colleagues across the aisle a cult what do you see in all of this well i think that the word cult is is probably correct that uh what a cult is especially a charismatic cult which is the kind we're talking about here where you have a an all-powerful leader trump who is seen as a god-like figure uh those cults are self-contained intentionally if you're in one you are required to believe the belief system of growth and a part of that which is important to understand is that you are also required to deny or ignore or attack those people who were would challenge the belief system of the group which is exactly what we see from many of these trump followers who simply act as though they cannot hear and they attack those people who challenge it as happened to liz cheney the advantage of being in such a group is that you have the uh an echo chamber of people who are admiring you and and affirming you it's a it's a self-affirming system everyone agrees on the same things and they all follow and worship the leader um on the other hand to stand up against that therefore means that you are an outcast you're a pariah you get thrown out of the group you get yourself attacked another advantage of being in the group is that you are seen as superior to the outsiders so and again we see that in the republican party they are the ones they say who are defending democracy or defending whatever they think they're defending by attacking voting rights and so forth but they are the righteous ones and they get that out of it so in order to get through to them you'd have to have uh somebody say the emperor has no clothes they would have to see that trump is in fact he is a dangerous criminal a psychopath um which would be very hard for them because they pinned a lot of their hopes and and focus on him and a lot of their actions um you would have to have somebody ideally from who is in the group speak up or even someone who is associated with it in the republican party i've wondered where uh george w bush is in all this you know i don't think he's in that cult but why is he not standing up that's the sort of thing that we need people to be able to speak up and break the holes that the leader has on them which is also partially a uh not only a worship of him but a fear of him of course and he has enormous power because he uses it and other people get afraid the people in congress especially are afraid of losing their power and their jobs that's a little different from the people who are supporting trump in the public but they have a special reason to uh be unwilling to take a moral stand in this issue morality so doctor it seems that one defense against cultism one personal defense that we might all possess or many of us might possess is intelligence uh you're simply too smart to fall for the stupidity of what the cult is selling what's the difference between adherence to a cult and stupidity i it helps to be stupid but i think that they're different because there are intelligent people who are members of cults you know as much as some of these people who are republicans who don't seem to care about either democracy or morality are odious to us they may be intelligent unfortunately intelligence doesn't help you when you've got these enormous internal and external pressures to stay in in line with with the leader i think it has certainly a moral quality uh people who have high moral qualities and values do stand up we sometimes consider them heroic they finally stand up and say this is not right as liz cheney did but i think we have to question the morality of these trump followers because their morality is not strong enough to overcome their self-interest of staying in the in the cult uh when we see some of the transcripts for example of fbi interviews of people who attacked the capital it is it is stunning just how low functioning their intelligence is in the in the information they processed that led them to that point well yes i think that at one point in his campaign trump said he loved uneducated people and i think that's a part of it yes i think the people who are the least complex thought processes are more likely to be vulnerable to dictators like trump and the other monster dictators we've seen in the 20th century they're more likely to just fall into line and say i wish to have someone strong who i falsely believe will look after me and i don't have to think too much i will do what that person says and believe whatever he says so yes it helps to be uneducated and it helps to not be very smart [Music] you

Channel: MSNBC

Views: 1,493,093

Keywords: Lawrence O'Donnell, marjorie taylor greene, gazpacho police, congress, gop, republicans, msnbc, us news, news

Id: Iqg2S8fthMw

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 10 2022