On Monday, Democrat Representative Pramila Jayapal appeared on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” and boasted about training Americans to take down a potential “dictatorship” of President Donald Trump.
Jayapal explained, “It appears that the Trump administration is willing to ignore judicial decisions and so that brings us to you in this room. It brings us to the people that is really, the bulwark, the wall against the crumbling of democracy.”
Host Rachel Maddow inquired, “Help me understand this idea of the resistance lab and what you’re talking about in practical terms at these events.”
Jayapal replied, “Yeah I mean, what we decided is that we really need to help Americans understand what happens when democracies fall when dictators take over. We’ve been pretty complacent in America. We haven’t had to really deal with this in any real way. And now I think people need to understand what are the lessons from other countries and working with experts who have studied democratic backsliding in countries around the world and the resistance movements that emerged to take on that democratic backsliding.”
She added, “We’ve developed a curriculum where we help people understand, how do you go after the pillars of support? Not necessarily the person at the top but the pillars of support that allow that person to continue to have power? And how do you shift allies from being sort of passive opponents to being active supporters of taking down a dictatorship?”