NBC’s Beschloss Compares Trump’s ‘Strongman Balcony Scene’ to Hitler, Latin American Dictators

EXCERPT:

BESCHLOSS: “I thought it was horrifying. I mean, I thought it was a strongman balcony scene. And what I mean by that is not that, we haven't at all sorts of times had, all sorts of presidents speaking from the balcony. Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated there for his fourth term. Jimmy Carter was there with Rosalynn Carter and the pope exactly this day in 1979. But what I am talking about is just what you were saying, Andrea, a lot of that scene was chilling because it reminded us of scenes that people could have seen of the 1930s, from Central Europe or Latin America. Someone strutting around trying to show his power, almost looked like a Vaudeville Act except it was not so funny. And look at the beginning of this country, Andrea. Thomas Jefferson felt a president’s simplicity and modesty was a guarantee to the public of the fact that he did not intend to take too much power. So he rode his own horse. He didn’t want to do things in a grand way. He even stopped speaking to Congress in person with the annual message we now call the State of the Union, because he thought that seemed too much like a monarch. If Abraham Lincoln had seen that scene last night, I think at first he'd laugh and at second thought he would be horrified.”