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Rachel Maddow devoted the first half of her show on Tuesday to the concept of how public officials can be made to reverse course through the use of shame.
Maddow said, “ What makes them correct course and start doing the right thing instead? One thing that sometimes works is shame and embarrassment. Being confronted with the wrongness of what they are doing, feeling shame or embarrassment, or at least the possibility of public rebuke and the awkwardness of being unable to explain their actions in a way that satisfies anyone. Sometimes you can’t turn public officials around, but sometimes you can. Sometimes that sort of thing can cause public officials who are otherwise behaving in ways that are weak and wrong to find their spine and to change their minds.”
After playing clips of Senate Republicans clearly not wanting to answer questions about Trump pardoning violent 1/6 insurrectionists, Rachel Maddow continued:
What they’re going along with here is something that they cannot justify. And so, therefore, they have no way to reasonably answer even very basic questions about it. And that turns out to be important. Because the stomach churning, self loathing that all of those senators felt today, the shame and embarrassment that they felt today as they were asked and asked and asked again about the president of their party springing 211 people who were actively incarcerated in federal prison, mostly for acts of violence against police officers, while they were taking part in a violent attack on the U.S. Congress from which some of these same senators had to run for their lives. The feeling they are having, that disgusting feeling of having to swallow this and try to come up with some way to try to stop talking about it because they can’t say anything about it that doesn’t disgust them and that isn’t viscerally wrong.
That feeling of being unable to say anything rational or true that justifies Trump throwing open the prison doors for 211 actively incarcerated people, many of whom were there for violently assaulting police officers. That feeling it created in Senators when they were pressed on that. That sickening feeling, maybe that, maybe that is what will save the country.
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From a historical point of view, Rachel Maddow was correct. Shame used to work on elected officials. Public officials would sometimes change course and do the right thing if the public and the media were intense enough in their shaming.
In the polarized environment of 2025, does the media apparatus still exist capable of applying shame? Mainstream media is owned by large corporations and billionaires who have already shown a willingness not to challenge Trump and the Republicans.
We have seen House and Senate Republicans wait out the blowback from things that Donald Trump has done in the past.
With mainstream media caving to Trump and Republicans living in a bubble of conservative media, could shaming House and Senate Republicans work in the way that Maddow suggests?
If pardoning and releasing violent criminals who beat police officers and tried to overthrow the government only resulted in four Senate Republicans publicly criticizing Trump, those odds don’t seem too promising.
However, public shame is better than sitting around and doing nothing, and who knows, Trump may eventually go so far that even members of his own party will condemn him in large numbers.
We haven’t seen it yet, but anything is possible.
What do you think about Rachel Maddow’s suggestion of using public shaming? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
