'We don't have just one': Maddow reveals what may be Americans' 'superpower' against Trump

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on May 19, 2025 (Image: Screegrab via MSNBC / YouTube)
President Donald Trump's administration may soon be caught off-guard by a burgeoning organic grassroots movement, according to MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.
During the Monday episode of her show, the primetime cable news host began by remarking on the wave of protests that swept Serbia after a train station's collapse killed 15 people last fall. She noted that Serbia has a "Trumpian" president who awarded the contract for the poorly built train station to a political benefactor, and used that as a pivot point to argue that all authoritarian leaders around the world are inherently corrupt. And she observed that in March, Donald Trump Jr. visited Serbia's embattled president as the Trump family seeks to build a $500 million luxury hotel development in the capital city of Belgrade.
Maddow then pivoted from Serbia's massive protest movement to the protests against Trump in the U.S., like a 15,000-person demonstration in which protesters stood side-by-side for 30 miles to demonstrate their opposition. And she opined that while Serbia's protest movement had a "catalyst" in the form of the train station collapse, there are "a million things" that could be described as the catalyst for the current anti-Trump protest movement.
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"What will the story be about us in our country in 2025?" Maddow asked. "...Maybe it's the cuts to Medicaid in the Trump-Republican budget. You know, there is a reason they keep scheduling the votes on this thing — at 11:00 last night on Sunday, and the next vote is 1 AM on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning ... There isn't a single congressional district in the entire country where cutting people off their Medicaid health insurance is popular. But Trump and the Republicans are trying to pass this thing to take health insurance away from at least at least five million Americans, and likely millions more than that."
Maddow also posited that there could be a catalyst in the form of the Republican budget bill's cuts to Medicaid, which provides health insurance to low-income and disabled Americans. She also brought up the Federal Aviation Administration's ongoing crisis in which air traffic controllers are losing communication with planes in the air outside of major airports, and United States Agency for International Development food donations meant for starving people in underdeveloped warehouses rotting in a warehouses.
"So when the history books are written about our generation in this moment, what will they say is our cause in standing up against the Trump administration? Turns out we don't have just one," Maddow said. And I think that might be part of our superpower here, because it allows for protests of various kinds and various stripes, nonviolent protests of every imaginable variety in every state in the country, just about every single day."
"This is no time to check out," she added. "And do not sleep on the power of protest and the power of pushback."
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Watch the segment below, or by clicking this link.
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