Chris Hayes: RNC speakers show a ‘curve of subservience and subservience’ to Trump

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Alex Wagner took some time during their coverage of the Republican National Convention on Tuesday to discuss the “humiliation” of several people who gave speeches in support of Donald Trump.

In particular, Trump’s former rivals in the primaries, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, gave speeches full of obsequious praise for Trump, even though they themselves had campaigned against him in the primary. And this despite the fact that, as Wagner and Hayes pointed out, Trump had repeatedly insulted them in a brutal, deeply offensive and, in Haley’s case, downright bigoted manner.

Wagner joked that the second night of the convention could have been called “a night of a thousand humiliations.” He noted that while it was nothing new for former rivals to speak at the primary winners’ convention, “Trump’s humiliation of these particular rivals reached a whole different order of magnitude during the Republican primary.”

Wagner then gave several examples of this, commenting, “Both Haley and DeSantis have chosen to publicly pledge their loyalty to Donald Trump, even though Donald Trump has no plans to meet with either of them tonight, not even after their speech at the convention. I mean, not even making the effort to meet with them is really just humiliation.”

Hayes responded that the most interesting thing about it was “a kind of trajectory … of submission, of subjugation. The politics of dominance, where you make fun of somebody, you intimidate them, you bully them, and then they kind of end up kneeling before you. And that happens over and over again, and it’s a big part of the kind of Trump mystique and ploy within the base. He’s the powerful one. He’s the dominant one.”

Hayes also noted that Trump’s choice of JD Vance as his vice presidential running mate was “one of the most extreme examples” of this.

“What I find remarkable is that there are these two twin impulses in the psychology of every person, like these people, which are ambition, ego and self-esteem,” Hayes said. “And it’s crazy to watch how I just feel like…”

“They are very distant from each other,” Wagner interjected.

“Exactly, they are at war with each other… I personally can’t say that I would demean myself,” Hayes added. “Because my ego is too big and I’m too vain.”

Watch the clip below, which also includes more in-depth discussions with MSNBC analysts Tim Miller and McKay Coppins: