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On Tuesday, Rachel Maddow devoted the first half of her show to the concept of how to get government officials to reverse course through the use of shame.
Maddow said: “What gets them to go the right way and start doing the right thing instead? One thing that sometimes works is shame and embarrassment. Facing the wrongness of what they've done, or at least the possibility of public rebuke and their actions.” the inconvenience of not being able to satisfactorily explain it. Sometimes you can't get around government officials, but sometimes you can Officials who otherwise behave weakly and wrongly should find their backbone and change their minds.”
After playing clips of Senate Republicans apparently unwilling to answer questions about Trump's pardoning of 1/6 violent rebels, Rachel Maddow continued:
What they're going with here is something they can't justify, and so they have no way to reasonably answer even very basic questions about it. And it turns out that it matters. Because all the senators felt the guts, the self-doubt, the embarrassment they felt today as they were asked, asked, and asked again about the president of their party who actively put 211 people in federal prison. mainly for the violence against police officers when they participated in the brutal attack on the US Congress, from which some of these same senators had to fight for their lives the feeling that they have, that disgusting feeling that they have to swallow this and try to find some way to try to stop talking about it because they can't say anything about it that doesn't disgust them and it's absolutely not disgusting: wrong.
The feeling of not being able to say anything rational or true that justifies Trump opening the prison doors to 211 active incarcerated people, many of whom were there for a brutal attack on the police. maybe that, maybe that will save the country.
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From a historical perspective, Rachel Maddow was right. Once upon a time, shame worked on elected officials. Government officials would sometimes reverse course and do the right thing if the public and the media were zealous enough in their shaming.
In the polarized environment of 2025, is there still a media apparatus capable of shaming? The mainstream media is owned by large corporations and billionaires who have already shown a willingness not to challenge Trump and the Republicans.
We've seen House and Senate Republicans expect a backlash from things that Donald Trump has done in the past.
With the mainstream media caving in to Trump and Republicans living in a conservative media bubble, could shaming House and Senate Republicans work as Maddow suggests?
If pardoning and releasing violent criminals who beat up police and tried to overthrow the government has only resulted in four Senate Republicans publicly criticizing Trump, the odds don't look very promising.
Still, public shaming is better than sitting back and doing nothing, and who knows, Trump may eventually go so far as to have even members of his own party condemn him in large numbers.
We haven't seen it yet, but anything is possible.
What do you think of Rachel Maddow's suggestion to use public shaming? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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