‘Swaggering assholery’ Rejected: Voters threw ‘toxic chuds’ out on their butts, says Hayes

Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. Republicans are experiencing Tuesday's landslide wipeout as a kind of chud extinction level event, an oaf apocalypse, if you will, from Congress, the White House, the Department of Justice. Some of the worst people in American public life are being fired or quitting or getting just kicked out. A stunning majority of conservatives, liberals, Democrats, Republicans, independent, everyone else who showed up to vote across the country seem to say in one unmistakable voice from coast to coast, this sucks. These people are awful. Get them out of here. People are disgusted with the style of politics that Trump and MAGA have cultivated now for over a decade. And you know what it is, right? It's not just the substance or the substance is terrible, but the trolling and the cruelty, the ignorance and indifference. And so all across the country, voters booted them out. Donald Trump's reaction is, of course, to get into the bunker with two of MAGA's biggest and most hated characters. Today, he announced that Susie Wiles is out as White House Chief of Staff, and the new person in charge of his agenda for the next two years will be Stephen Miller. Ah, yes, that's Stephen Miller. Charming man. The architect of the arm-masked ICE pogroms that everybody hated. The spreader of homophobic slurs against James Tallarico that everybody hated. And the Islamophobic slurs against Abdu'l-Sayed that everybody hated. Imagine looking at these election results, the biggest margin in 52 years, and thinking what America wants is more of this guy. The Democrats have become a party of freaks, weirdos, losers, and crazies. But you can't laugh it off because it's deadly serious. When you give these people power, everything you know and love in this world falls apart. You have chaos, corruption, decay, violence, poverty. Oh, the irony. So why him, you might ask? Because, you know, Trump is a political genius. Sometimes in life you have to make moves. That's exactly what voters said on Tuesday. Trump's making moves, people. And while most everybody is viewing this as a giant middle finger to the giant majority of Americans who just voted out all the Stephen Miller types in the election, there is one guy at least who seems to be entirely all in. Because within minutes of the announcement, the secretary of modified pushups, Pete Hegseth, posted, huge congrats to Stephen Miller, a true patriot and America first fighter. He never backs down. The Department of War is right there with him. Seven minutes later, Hegseth posted, patriots in control. Less than half an hour later, Hegseth posted a photo of himself beside Miller in case anyone had missed all the subtext here. With the text, stand, fight, defend the republic. Now, if you're thinking to yourself, gee, the secretary of defense seems really thirsty for this guy. Shouldn't he be busy fighting a Middle East war that he's losing instead of posting? You see, Hegseth is preoccupied with another battle right now for his livelihood. Many Democrats on the campaign trail called for for his impeachment, but now so are Republicans. One outgoing congressman, Republican Thomas Massie, says he is filing articles of impeachment against Hegseth next week when everyone comes back to Congress unless Hegseth resigns. And Hegseth is not resigning. Instead, he and his inner circle have started a resistance campaign using Pentagon social media with a boost from the White House, which amplified this bizarre video of Hegseth blasting his political critics. Just like the president, we don't back down, and that especially applies now. But why do the Democrats and the deep state radicals really hate us? Because we tore down their sacred cows one by one and without apology. We will stand, we will fight, and we will defend this republic from all enemies, foreign and domestic. I hate to break out the editor's pen, but do you do you tear down sacred cows? I don't think that quite works, but whatever. We'll come back to it. Also, this is just a complete abuse of a government office like that. The official Pentagon that we pay for that. You know that like that's ours. We pay for that. But this is what you get from Donald Trump's new ride or die crew. Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth. Trump told reporters today, Thursday, actually, he thinks Hegseth is doing a fantastic job. We'll have more on Hegseth's possible impeachment later in the show because there are a lot of developments on that front. But Trump is really going to ground with his two most, I think it's fair to say, reviled aides, really, right after the country just rebuked him and their whole style. I mean, resoundingly, America really did send a clear message. Not all elections are this clear, but when you get a once in 52 year majority, we weighed in, all of us this week, and we rejected Swaggering assholery, for lack of a better phrase, that has been the defining characteristic of the MAGA Republican Party. And we threw most of the most repellent, most toxic Republicans out on their butts. By we, I mean the American people, the voters. Max Miller. Remember him? The MAGA congressman who refused to drop out amidst truly heinous accusations of domestic abuse, which he denied? Well, he lost his seat by almost 10 points. Not close. Didn't eke it out. Just gone. Bye-bye. No thank you, Max Miller. Vivek Ramaswamy, the terminally off-putting, condescending, smarmy troll who ran possibly the most despicable campaign ad in history, lost by eight points in Ohio. Not a squeaker. Thumped. Turfed out. Tossed out of the bar. When he called Amy Acton to concede, she let him go to voicemail. Brennan Herrera, the pro-gun YouTuber who the Republican-Jewish Coalition called a goose-stepping extremist. He lost by eight points in a swing district. Well, not really a swing district. One Trump carried by double digits. Lauren Boebert talked about yesterday. She's losing. Virginia Fox also losing. Race is not called. Remember Texas Republican Beau French, the statewide official who suggested there were too many non-white students at the University of Texas with that really disgusting post? The guy who published a survey asking if Jews or Muslims were a bigger threat to the U.S. He lost the Texas Railroad Commissioner's race to a Jewish state representative. All of these people were callous. They were repellent, performatively so. They were running in pro-Trump environments where that's been A-OK for about a decade. And this week, they all got smashed. And I think the consequences are reaching far beyond the polls. Yesterday, Hermie Dillon, the head of Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, resigned. She also has been a very, very prodigious troll. Dillon had taken that division, used it to hunt for non-existent voter fraud, extort woke universities for hundreds of million dollars in federal grants, basically turned the civil rights division on its head, all while posting nasty and obnoxious stuff on Twitter. She's gone. So is the U.S. attorney in charge of the so-called grand conspiracy probe into Obama-era officials Jason Redding-Cuñones? Insiders say he was having trouble making any charges stick. Go figure. Also, really interesting that some people do seem to have gotten the memo like pretty quickly, right? Look at J.D. Vance. Before the election, this man was traveling across the country acting like the patron saint of chuds. And after, he suddenly sounds like a wonky Yale law grad student offering sober postmortems on what Republicans should do differently, talking about what his most trusted data guys are saying, rather than all but calling Tallarico slurs and defaming Haitian immigrants. Oh, interesting, J.D., you do know how to talk like that and communicate like that. Ted Cruz, same thing. Suddenly, we see Ted Cruz, the Harvard law graduate, the former SCOTUS clerk, instead of the soft-chair-bound Islamophobic MAGA chud podcaster. Is it disingenuous? Yes. Is it a little bit funny? Absolutely. But that's the tribute vice pays to virtue, I guess. Those guys are smart enough to realize what we all realize, I think, right now. The Donald Trump era is not over. Donald Trump's still the president. But the MAGA style of politics is in decline and fall phase. And if you need another sign, unrelated but also totally related, how about this? The Cybertruck is no more. Today, MAGA megadonor Elon Musk, the guy who burned half a billion dollars trying to stop Texas from turning blue, announced that Tesla will wind down production by next year. The American car buyer has spoken. No one wants to buy that ridiculous car. It's just been that kind of week. Things have changed. Let me be clear. Two more years of Donald Trump will still be incredibly dangerous. All the more so with Stephen Miller as the chief of staff and Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon for as long as he's there. But this ain't January 2025, fellas. They can't just steamroll everyone. We're in a very different world. Hey, it's Rachel. I am so glad to see you at the end of that clip because this is where I get to tell you about a new way to watch all our clips and all of our shows and everything on MSNOW on your phone or your tablet or your laptop. You can watch things live or recorded. Plus, you can ask me and all the other hosts and reporters questions in our weekly live chats. You can go to ms.now slash membership or just click below. Thanks.