The cast of MSNBC’s Morning Joe welcomed The Age of Grievance author Frank Bruni to their Thursday show to discuss his book that argues that the far-left and the far-right share several common traits, including their desire to portray themselves as the main victims in society. Another common trait Bruni has assigned to both sides is an opposition to free speech, although one of his examples of conservative censorship was quite underwhelming, as he seemed to confuse simply defunding public broadcasting with yanking it off the air.
Host Joe Scarborough recalled a conversation he had with someone closer to the MAGA-sphere who offered up multiple reasons why Democrats lost in 2024. Scarborough didn’t deny the arguments but tried to apply them to Republicans as well, “But these five things, like you said, it was a grievance against the Democrats, when in fact, and also the refusal to broker dissent. You could say the same thing about Republicans. Talk about that: how they really mirroring each other.”
Scarborough claimed problems include being stuck in echo chambers and not tolerating dissent, but Bruni wanted to focus on a different one, “A million percent. And Joe, you just mentioned free speech, which is, I think, one of the best examples, right? If you go back to Trump's campaign and if you look at what all of his allies and supporters were saying. They were talking about the way in which the left, with all of its political correctness, its wokeness had censored speech, punished people for speaking the wrong way and essentially taken us very far away from the First Amendment, right?”
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