Yale Professor Warns MSNBC Viewers To ‘Think About The Mafia’ When Trying To ‘Understand’ Trump Appointments

Yale University professor Jason Stanley warned MSNBC viewers Sunday that if they wished to “understand” President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments they should “think of the mafia.”

Stanley, who teaches philosophy, appeared on Ayman to speak with host Ayman Mohyeldin about Trump’s interview with NBC News on Sunday and to discuss the cabinet taking shape as the president-elect prepares to return to the White House.

The panelists reflected on Trump’s comments during the interview that he was planning to fire FBI director Christopher Wray and, in a separate moment, that members of the January 6th committee should “go to jail.” When pressed whether he would instruct his FBI director to pursue those cases, Trump said no.

Mohyeldin, however, observed that Trump was planning to replace Wray with “subservient loyalist” Kash Patel, who will carry out investigations in Trump’s interest without being “explicitly” told to do so.

Stanley replied to argue that Trump was behaving like a “mob boss” and was following a “familiar strategy” as seen in “gangster films.”

If you want to understand what is going on, think about the mafia. This is the same thing. And again, the literature, historical literature on dictators talks about the relationship. Hannah Ran talks about this between the fascist leaders, say, and the mob boss. So, you hire the people who are going to… who already know what you want. It is a very familiar strategy we all know from gangster films.

I’m very relieved that they are not targeting the people who wrote statements for the January 6th Committee like myself, but, you know, it is completely — this is all par for the course, targeting opposition politicians and the media.

Continuing, the professor raised the alarm that the selections were “being normalized by the media.”

“They are just reporting on it as if it’s normal,” he added.

Watch above on MSNBC.