During an appearance on Thursday night’s edition of MSNBC’s “The Briefing with Jen Psaki,” Rachel Maddow spoke about the importance and power of economic boycotts in the fight against the Trump administration.
Maddow noted at the top of her remarks, first reported in a video shared by Mediaite, that there have been “organized boycotts” that have worked in President Trump’s favor this year. “We’ve seen this, for example, when companies have rescinded their DEI policies,” Maddow explained. “There have been organized boycotts along these lines this year since Trump pressured companies to do it.”
The “Rachel Maddow Show” host, however, pointed to the consequences of ABC and Disney’s brief suspension of Jimmy Kimmel as proof of the power American consumers have in the fight against authoritarianism. Following Kimmel’s suspension, there were massive calls among consumers to cancel their Hulu and Disney+ subscriptions, and many did just that.
“Look at the Kimmel fiasco, right? [FCC Chairman] “Brendan Carr and the Trump administration finally proclaimed that they didn’t do everything they did to try to get Jimmy Kimmel taken off the air because he was a Trump critic,” Maddow said. “But it was only afterward that the institutions, the public and for-profit institutions, through which they were trying to act, were pressured by the American people to change their minds.”
“When ABC, Disney, Nexstar and Sinclair hear from their own customers and the American people about what they’re doing, these organizations, even right-wing organizations like Sinclair, are very responsive to public and consumer feedback,” Maddow said.
Making her previous point, Maddow noted that public companies are not as insulated from criticism or consumer backlash as Trump and some members of his Cabinet are. “All of the institutions that they’re trying to work on to get the kind of authoritarian transformation that they want in this country, a lot of those institutions are open to the public and are very responsive,” Maddow observed.
“That kind of economic pressure can really, really make a difference,” the MSNBC anchor continued. “Any company that’s thinking about, you know, giving Trump a gold statue or removing ICEBlock type apps from their App Store or any of the other things that tech companies and these other companies are doing. Any company [that] want to do things like that, they should know they’re going to hear the American people talk about it.
Maddow added: “I think these repercussions are going to continue and intensify as Trump becomes more and more unpopular, as he becomes more and more radical. »
