MSNBC host Ali Velshi said Americans are waiting on Democrats to “get off the mat and get back into the fight” in an anti-Trump screed delivered on his Saturday program. “A ranting, would-be strongman who embraces stupidity and brags about dictatorship, who talks about taking over other countries, coddles authoritarianism, and seeks revenge against perceived opponents is the president,” Velshi said. “His unqualified henchmen surround him, and yet the leadership of the Democratic Party cannot seem to find the front of the battle line. Political leaders who think their job is to keep the government open and cut deals and make strongly worded statements to the media and on the floor of Congress are missing this moment entirely.” Velshi called on Democrats to “fight a bit dirty” if that’s what it takes to defend democracy. “Americans are begging for more, begging them to get off the mat and get back into the fight,” he said. “So if you are a political leader in this country and you are not prepared to fight with both hands, you’re not prepared to make good trouble, then perhaps you should step aside and make space for those who will, for those who will show us that they can fight a bit dirty if that’s what the defense of democracy takes, because right now that is what the defense of democracy demands.”

ALI VELSHI, MSNBC HOST:  Today we speak with some reverence about the U.S. Constitution. The document, remarkable for its time, that established our democracy and still guides and informs our rights and freedoms to this day. But when the U.S. Constitution was presented to the Founding Fathers for ratification, they weren’t universally enthusiastic about it. In 1787, ever the optimist, 81-year-old Benjamin Franklin delivered his final speech to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He had to convince several delegates to sign on to the Constitution. Many of them harbored hesitations. In fact, Franklin had a few himself. He acknowledged that the Constitution was indeed flawed and left space for the possibility that over time, as society and opinions changed, so would this document. But despite its faults, Franklin believed this Constitution was better than the alternative, living under a monarchy without representative democracy. It was the no-kings movement of the time. Franklin was able to persuade the holdouts. The Constitution was signed, and the United States of America was born. It is said that on the way out of the convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked what sort of government the delegates had just created. He responded, quote, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Our Constitution, and more broadly, our democracy, has been resilient, more of a cactus than a rose. But it does require some attention. Even in easy times, this democracy needs care. And we’re not in easy times. Right now, it’s in dire need of defense, and it needs defenders who are willing to do whatever it takes. True democracy also requires the competition of ideas. When that does not exist, political parties stop functioning properly. And when even one of our two major parties stops functioning, democracy itself is put at risk. We all know by now that the Republican Party is no longer a functioning political party in America. It is a fully captured vessel of authoritarianism, which makes it even more vital that the Democratic Party rise to this moment in defense of our democracy. But whether national democratic leadership is unwilling or simply unable to do so, they are largely not rising to this moment. Now, those of you who watch the show regularly know that I don’t trade in inside-the-beltway gossip. I don’t spend a lot of time in Washington. I don’t really know who’s up or down inside the Democratic Party caucus, or what some Republican whip whispered in a closed-door lunch. So when I criticize Democrats, and I do, some folks, including some of you, think I go too far. I get social media posts saying I’m rooting against the Democrats. So let me be clear. My job is journalism. I do not work for the Democratic Party. I am not a member of the Democratic Party, and I certainly don’t do PR for the Democratic Party. My job, the job of journalism, is to bear witness on your behalf. To hold power to account on your behalf. And avoiding hard truths is not how you save democracy. Right now, one of those hard truths is that America has been badly let down by the leadership of the Democratic Party. And in my view, it’s time for some of those leaders to step aside and to let people who are prepared to fight, fight. Fight so hard that they might break something. Let the fighters step in and take over, because I see the fight. I see the energy, and I see the will out there. I see it in voters in Iowa who just flipped a Republican state Senate seat in one fell swoop on Tuesday. They ended the Republican supermajority chokehold on that state. I see it in Texas, where people fought tooth and nail against Trump-backed gerrymandering. You might say they lost the battle, but in my opinion, their actions will prove one day soon to have won the war. I see it in Gavin Newsom and in JB Pritzker, who are taking on Trump and the Republican Party in ways the Democratic leadership in Washington seems unwilling to do. I see it in Bernie Sanders, drawing crowds of tens of thousands in his full-throated fight against oligarchy. I see it in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who from the moment she was elected to the White House in 2018, has never shied away from loudly speaking her mind and shaking things up. I see it in the two Justins who were expelled from the Tennessee state legislature for participating in a gun violence protest after a deadly mass shooting in their state, leading from the front. I see it in grassroots organizations like Indivisible, in the millions of Americans who’ve turned out under banners like No Kings. I see it in New York City, in Zohran Mamdani, who knows that the rent is too damn high. But Mamdani, one of the closest things that the Democratic Party has to a young, relevant phenomenon who draws new voters into the coalition, still has not been endorsed. By New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, who claims to have a lot of fire in her belly about the whole redistricting thing. Or by New York’s senior senator, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate who seems regularly and validly outraged, but that’s about it. Or by New York Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader who sure can deliver a hell of a speech. Or by New York’s other senator, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who actually runs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Here in New York, Mamdani captured the imagination of voters in a super-crowded field. He’s out polling all of his opponents combined and yet his own party’s leaders will not embrace him, let alone try to hitch a ride on his populist coattails. Mamdani is emblematic because he’s actually that fighter who learns what his voters care about and meets his voters where they are. And if he has to break some china to become the next mayor of America’s biggest city, he will. It’s just one example, but it’s an important one given that the National Guard is patrolling the streets of America’s cities, and ICE is roaming about disappearing people. I, for one, am looking for every fighter I can find. I could not care less if he’s a democratic socialist, just like I could not care less that Liz Cheney is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. I would vote for Mamdani and I would vote for Cheney and any one of those people who are prepared to risk something for the benefit of their fellow citizens and for democracy. But I’d be hard-pressed these days to vote for Kathy Hochul or Chuck Schumer or Kirsten Gillibrand or Hakeem Jeffries or the people who lead the mess that the Democratic National Committee is these days. The people who control the levers of power in the Democratic Party appear to me to be standing on the sidelines. Where is the party?   We are in the boiling frog moment of authoritarianism. Tanks are on our streets. Speech is being extinguished. Elected politicians arrested and charged. Judges ignored. But with each norm eroded, each law bent, each lie normalized, each threat brushed aside, we get farther and farther away from the republic that Franklin warned us we could lose. A ranting, would-be strongman who embraces stupidity and brags about dictatorship, who talks about taking over other countries, coddles authoritarianism, and seeks revenge against perceived opponents is the president. His unqualified henchmen surround him, and yet the leadership of the Democratic Party cannot seem to find the front of the battle line. Political leaders who think their job is to keep the government open and cut deals and make strongly worded statements to the media and on the floor of Congress are missing this moment entirely. Americans are begging for more, begging them to get off the mat and get back into the fight. So if you are a political leader in this country and you are not prepared to fight with both hands, you’re not prepared to make good trouble, then perhaps you should step aside and make space for those who will, for those who will show us that they can fight a bit dirty if that’s what the defense of democracy takes, because right now that is what the defense of democracy demands. American history has given us leaders who met the existential threats of their time head on. Lincoln did not preserve the union by managing the crisis. FDR did not confront fascism abroad or at home by splitting the difference. They fought. They broke the china. This is not a left versus right fight inside the Democratic Party. It’s not whether Democrats should tack to the center or lean progressive. The choice before us is simply democracy versus authoritarianism. And where is the party is not a rhetorical question. It’s the most urgent question in America today. If the answer is silence, then we risk Benjamin Franklin’s 1787 warning becoming a prophecy. Is America a monarchy or a republic?  “A republic, if you can keep it,” he said. So I’ll ask again, where is the party?   Is it in smoke-filled rooms of Washington waiting for the polls to turn? Or is it with the people who are already in the streets, already raising their voices, already demanding the fight? If the party won’t show up for democracy, the people will.

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