Rachel Maddow Says Nonviolent Protest Is Still the Answer After Minneapolis ICE Shooting

“We can believe our own eyes against what they’re telling us,” the MS NOW anchor tells Jimmy Kimmel

Rachel Maddow stopped by “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Thursday night to explain why, in the wake of the shooting in Minneapolis earlier this week, the key to pushing back against the Trump administration is still “nonviolent protest.”

Maddow spoke briefly on the killing of 37-year-old Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent on Wednesday, telling Kimmel, “The key is nonviolent protest, and this woman who got shot in Minneapolis, this mom, she was not doing anything violent. Had she wanted, had she been trying to drive into those federal agents, she would have steered toward them, not away from them.”

In response, Kimmel asked Maddow if she sincerely believes that the peaceful protests against Trump she routinely covers on her show actually make any positive difference. “Yes, I do,” the “Rachel Maddow Show” host immediately replied. The MS NOW anchor went on to defend her position.

“In political science terms, there’s what’s called the 3.5% Rule, which is that if you look at authoritarian regimes of various kinds all over the world over the last century, once you have 3.5% of a population protesting nonviolently against a dictator or an authoritarian, that is essentially an unstoppable force,” she explained. “It’s not that much larger a number than what we’re already seeing in the streets against Trump.”

Maddow pointed to the protests in Minneapolis and the videos taken of the ICE agents operating in the city by protestors as proof of her point. “They want their version of what’s happening out there to be the only version,” she added of the Trump administration. “But the people can tell their own story and can take their own videos, and we can believe our own eyes against what they’re telling us.”

During her ABC late night appearance, Maddow unpacked the current state of the Trump administration and where the president’s unpopularity currently sits within the context of greater American history. “This presidency is not offering this country very much right now, especially in terms of the earnest reasons people may have voted for him,” the MS NOW anchor remarked.

“If you thought he was going to do something about inflation, he hasn’t. His tariffs made it worse,” she continued. “He’s invaded Venezuela. Maybe you thought he wasn’t going to start foreign wars. All this stuff that you maybe thought was on offer from him is not.”

“Instead, what we’ve got is a guy who’s saying he doesn’t really believe he’s subject to election results if he loses. So that means he plans on staying after we want him to go, and he’s essentially invading U.S. cities and using military-style force against the American people,” Maddow further noted. “Nobody’s ever been this unpopular at this point in their presidency except for Richard Nixon.”

“Trump is really unpopular, and the violence that he’s using against the American people while telling us he doesn’t care what we think is pretty unique and it’s pretty radical,” she concluded. “That’s why you’re seeing so many people protest against him, and I think that’s why he’s so worried about the protests.”

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