Rachel Maddow details 'horrific' ways lives are being 'ruined' during second Trump presidency

Although "The Rachel Maddow Show" only airs once a week, the liberal MSNBC host is keeping busy with a variety of projects — from documentaries to her podcast "Ultra." Maddow's most recent documentary is "Andrew Young: The Dirty Work," which focuses on the life of former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, now 93.

Donald Trump's second presidency is giving Maddow a lot to talk about. And she laid out some of the things she is especially worried about in an interview with Vanity Fair's Keziah Weir published in Q&A form on October 13.

Trump, Maddow warned, is a making a "horrific" effort to "ruin" the lives of those who challenge him.

"There's this sometimes over-simplistic way that we talk about bravery: When asked to do something against my ethical core or the Constitution, I, of course, will resign on principle," Maddow told Vanity Fair. "We think about that as a noble thing. But then, you see what it really means to say no — not because there's been some misunderstanding or some glitch in the system, but rather, because we now have an authoritarian government that is asking people to do horrific things. People are not just being fired; they're being threatened, their families are being threatened. There's an effort by the government, led by the president, to ruin people who have opposed them."

Maddow continued, "Against that malevolent force, the idea of the heroic course isn't romantic and doesn't come with swelling strings and big applause. It often just comes with essentially sacrificing everything you thought your life was going to be."

The longtime MSNBC host pointed to the federal criminal indictments taking place in the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) Eastern District of Virginia — which so far, have included former FBI Director James Comey and New York State Attorney General Letitia James — as a troubling example of Trump's revenge campaign.

Maddow told Vanity Fair, "What's happening in the Eastern District of Virginia right now — there's really dramatic reporting about what the lawyers and prosecutors in that office, and the FBI field agents who work with them, what they've been asked to do by a government that is explicitly calling for punitive persecution of the president's perceived enemies."

Maddow pointed to the reinstatement of "Jimmy Kimmel Live" by ABC/Disney as a positive sign. The show was suspended indefinitely in response to comments Kimmel made following the fatal shooting of Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk, but ABC/Disney put the show back on the air following an intense public outcry.

Maddow told Vanity Fair, "The Trump Administration was trying to shut down Jimmy Kimmel, but they needed to use the network and the local station groups in order to do it…. Trump does not care what the American people think about his authoritarian intention. But if he's going to use the institutions and powerful people in this country to get his way, those institutions and powerful people are going to hear from the American people."

During the interview, Maddow sounded the alarm about the MAGA movement's efforts to seize control of mass media.

"In general," Maddow told Vanity Fair, "having a handful of billionaires own all the most important and influential media in the country is just a bad idea for any democracy, and something that we ought to have better antibodies against as a country…. Obviously, now with an authoritarian government in place, they want that consolidation more than they want anything. It's strong man rule, chapter one — so just systemically, it’s bad."