The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Tue, 4 Mar 2025
Rachel Maddow surveys the varied and widespread protests in opposition to Donald Trump's wanton destruction of the federal government. From weather scientists to immigrants to LGBTQ+ and its allies to consumer advocates to park rangers, each round of firings or extremist executive orders brings a new collection of anti-Trump activists under an ever-widening tent.
Chapter 1: How did the Battle of Britain influence US foreign policy in 1940?
Really happy to have you here. So on July 10th, 1940, the German Air Force started its large-scale attack on our closest overseas ally, on Great Britain. That was the start of the Battle of Britain. And at that point, Great Britain was the last man standing in Western Europe. The Germans had spread out into Austria and then into Czechoslovakia.
And then they took Poland and Denmark and Norway and Belgium and the Netherlands and Luxembourg and France. Nazi Germany was just rolling through all of those countries. And at the end, Britain was it. Starting July 10th, 1940, the might of the German Air Force turned its sights to destroying and ultimately trying to take Britain as well because they wanted all of it. They wanted all of Europe.
And at that point, the United States had to decide what we were going to do. Here was not just our closest overseas ally, but here was the last country standing in the way of total Nazi domination of all of Europe, which is what Hitler seemed to want to use not only for its own ends, but he seemed to want to use that as the cornerstone of a global Third Reich. Nazi world domination.
And here's little Great Britain standing as the last thing between them and control of that continent. So what were we going to do? What President Roosevelt wanted to do was help our ally, help Great Britain stand up to the Nazis, help them hold the line.
FDR expended a huge amount of political capital to do that, and also just capital, money, to send Britain as much support as he could manage, short of us getting into the war ourselves in 1940. That's what FDR did. That is what we remember the United States doing as a country. But at the time, it definitely wasn't like a consensus decision.
That is definitely what President Roosevelt wanted to do, but lots of other people in the country did not want to do that at all. Remember that date, July 10th. That's when the German Air Force started attacking the British mainland, July 10th. Exactly one month later, on August 10th, 1940, a sitting U.S. senator gave a national speech on the radio in which he demanded that England...
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Chapter 2: What was Senator Ernest Lundin's controversial stance during WWII?
should say thank you to us. They should be way more grateful. They should show us some respect. Frankly, all our allies should for all that we've done for them. And it was time, frankly, for them to start paying us back. That senator's name was Ernest Lundin. He was a senator from Minnesota.
And in Congress, he had formed something called the Make Europe Pay War Debts Committee, which said that we shouldn't be helping our so-called allies in Europe at all because, frankly, those allies, especially England, they owed us. They owed us money from the First World War, money they hadn't been able to pay back yet.
We should focus now on making them pay us back rather than us giving them any more help. I mean, who cares that they're being invaded and attacked by the huge Nazi war machine, which has already invaded and taken over the whole rest of Western Europe? Not our problem. We should be collecting right now on what they owe us for helping them already the first time around.
And no way should we be giving them any more help. Ernest Lundin was actually so into the idea of the Make Europe Pay War Debts Committee that he formed a second committee with a similar name that focused specifically on how they should pay their debts to us. His other committee said that they should pay their war debts to us by giving us their islands. Islands for War Debts Committee.
That was his idea. Our allies are in the middle of being invaded and bombed and occupied by the Nazis. But this seems like a good moment to see if we can get some stuff off of them.
Seizure of the islands may be necessary, as was once advocated by Andrew Jackson, our great American president. Danish and Dutch, British and French island possessions in America all must become American. In the meantime, our debts are piling sky high, approaching 50 billion. with a $6 billion deficit this year.
Yeah, see, we've got these debts. They owe us. Let's seize their islands to cover some of their debt to us. Let them fight off the Nazis themselves. They owe us. We shouldn't be helping them anymore. Less than two weeks after giving that speech on the radio, Senator Ernest Lundin was dead in a mysterious plane crash.
When they pulled his body out of the wreckage, they found in the pocket of his jacket a draft speech that he had been planning on giving in the United States Senate that was kind of along the same lines as that radio address. Definitely don't support our supposed allies as they are fighting Hitler. Who cares about whether or not they can fight Hitler off or not?
What's so bad about Germany anyway? That was the draft of the speech in his pocket. He never got a chance to deliver that speech because he died in that plane crash. But that speech that he had on him, they had in his pocket when he died. Turns out that speech was written for him. By the Nazi government, by a Nazi agent, by the Hitler government's top paid propaganda agent in the United States.
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