On his eponymous Sunday evening show, MSNBC host Ayman Mohyeldin presided over a panel of liberals who tried to link the conservative push for Americans to have more children to “white supremacy” and Adolf Hitler, and rejoiced over “very old white” Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) being yelled at in his home state.
After playing a clip of Senator Grassley at a townhall meeting in Iowa with a member of the audience shouting at him, Mohyeldin wondered why Republicans are willing to keep doing townhalls, Jenny Hagel, who writes for The Late Show with Seth Meyers, took a shot the Iowa Republican for being white: “I think it’s hubris. I mean, I think if it’s if you are used to being in control for so long both as a party — and then Chuck Grassley is just a very old white man. I don’t think he’s ever walked into a room and not had it go his way.“
Clearly, she’s ignored Senator Grassley trying to get the media to take the Biden family scandals seriously. After Mohyeldin began laughing, she continued:
Later on, during a discussion of the possibility that President Donald Trump will try to offer incentives to get more women to become mothers to increase the nation’s birth rate, Mohyeldin suggested that it would be ironic because “this is an administration that has launched both a war against women and a war on children.” Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell tied “white supremacy” into the drive, garnering agreement from the MSNBC host:
And, as the group invoked authoritarian leaders who have pushed to increase birth rates, comedian W. Kamau Bell — who used to be a CNN host — played the Hitler card:
MSNBC’s Ayman
April 27, 2025
8:32 p.m. Eastern
AYMAN MOHYELDIN: Kamau, do these townhalls — do they matter? Or are we making too much of a big deal about them? Is the core support of the Republican party still unbothered by the cruelty of deportations, the destruction of our federal government, the cancellation of, you know, virus detectors, only to bring them back and say, “Oh, oh, you know, we’re fighting disease — oh, no, actually, no, we made that mistake, and now we’re going to bring them back.”
W. KAMAU BELL, COMEDIAN: No, I think I’m different than you. I do celebrate the townhall meetings where people are yelling at the Senators, you know. I never thought I’d be on the side of a 91-year-old man and people yelling at a 91-year-old man and be on the side of the people yelling at the 91-year-old man. (Mohyeldin laughs) But I’m on the side of the people yelling at the 91-year-old man.
MOHYELDIN: I will say, in my defense, “I am for that” — I meant for the constituents fighting against each other. I am all for screaming at American politicians regardless of their age — regardless of their age — but I definitely — I just meant seeing constituents yelling at each other when they’re saying to each other, “Shut up and sit down.” That’s a little bit discouraging, I would say.
BELL: Yeah, but, ah, yes, but I do think that these townhalls matter. I think it matters that the Republicans are telling each other not to have townhalls. I think it matters that, like, even with Chuck Grassley — who’s seen as sort of this innocuous figure because he’s an old man — that those people who normally would not yell at a 91-year-old man are like, “No, no, no, I have to yell at you,” you know. So I think these are a big deal.
MOHYELDIN: Why are they doing it? Why are they doing these townhalls? I mean, why — they know that they’re going to descend into this kind of chaos and — and some of them have actually tried to avoid them. There have been, you know, Republicans, to be fair, in the House, who are dodging their constituents — avoiding the whole townhalls because they don’t want to feel that wrath or that heat that’s coming at them?
JENNY HAGEL, WRITER FOR LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS: I think it’s hubris. I mean, I think if it’s if you are used to being in control for so long both as a party — and then Chuck Grassley is just a very old white man. I don’t think he’s ever walked into a room and not had it go his way. (Mohyeldin laughs) So, like, I think you just don’t think — you’re, like, “Well, they’re mad at the other people, but they won’t be mad at me.”
MOHYELDIN: Yeah, exactly.
HAGEL: “I’m an old white guy named Chuck. The world was built for me.” And I think you can see there’s another clip that I saw of the same townhall where you can see the look on his face where he looks so shocked and this woman is yelling. I’m like, yeah, he’s never — “I don’t think anybody has ever yelled at you.”
MOHYELDIN: Yeah, right.
HAGEL: Certainly not a woman. “I don’t think you knew women were allowed to yell.” So I think it’s just — I think they haven’t adjusted to the current world order.
(…)
8:40 p.m.
MOHYELDIN: The Trump administration is beyond just giving out medals to mothers — is apparently considering giving $5,000 as bonuses — you know, kind of like an end-of-year bonus. This one is a $5,000 per child bonus to mothers after delivery. And it may not seem like much, but — and especially when you think about the fact that this is an administration that has launched both a war against women and a war on children.
(…)
MOHYELDIN: I mean, the conservative pro-natalists, you know, they’re taking this basically from authoritarian regimes around the world that we have seen in previous decades. And yet here it is, you know, to Catherine’s point, it can be a legitimate issue. It is a legitimate issue to try to address this societal phenomenon. But, at the same time, the way they’re going about it is, I would argue, disrespectful, shallow —
CATHERINE RAMPELL, THE WASHINGTON POST: Gross.
MOHYELDIN: Gross and meaningless.
BELL: Yeah, I would say all those things — the thing I really think about is the right often gets mad when Trump is compared to Hitler. Then I would say, “Have him stop doing Hitler things.”
MOHYELDIN (laughing): Right.
BELL: If you don’t want him to be compared to Hitler, maybe he should stop doing Hitler things. Maybe Elon Musk — his friend — should stop doing Hitler things if they don’t want to be compared to Hitler. And, of course, I’m referring to the Nazi salute he did — the two of them. So, yeah, this is awful although my wife has three — she gave birth to three daughters, so does she get half a medal? I’m just wondering how that works. But, yeah, this is awful.
(…)
MOHYELDIN: There could be real objectives, but the approach makes you wonder what is this administration’s real motivation behind this. … But why are they doing this, Catherine? It doesn’t make sense — like, why?
RAMPELL: Well, there is this weird, culty pro-natalist community that wants to marry encouraging more women — specifically, more white women — to have babies and also downplay their career ambitions and various other things. So there’s, like, some other patriarchal white supremacist stuff mixed into all of this —
MOHYELDIN: Yeah.
RAMPBELL: — in addition to, you know, actual real concerns that some of us have about building the infrastructure so people can have the number of children that they want and so that they’re not drowning when they have children so that they have child care — so that their kids have adequate nutrition and all of the other support systems they need. This is not what this is about. You know, they don’t, like, I remember a debate a few years ago about “Well, we can’t just use,” you know, immigrants, for example, have more children on average than native-born Americans, and — but those brown babies —
MOHYELDIN: Yeah, “We don’t want those babies.”
RAMPELL: “We don’t want the brown and, you know, the brown babies.”
HAGEL: They don’t want you to have children — they want you to have voters.
MOHYELDIN: Right.
HAGEL: They want you to have potential Republican voters.
RAMPELL: There was this line — I forget who came up with it — but it was like, “Those are other people’s babies.” And it’s like, no, they’re American babies. If they’re born on American soil, they’re American babies. So, at the same time that they are encouraging. So, at the same time that they are encouraging, you know, these sort of like weird, culty, Ann of Green Gables-dressed people to like — I’m serious, you should look at the photos of like the spokespeople of this movement. At the same time that they are encouraging those people to have more babies, they’re taking away — they’re trying to take away birthright citizenship from the children of immigrants, and they’re trying to, you know, I mean, otherwise tormenting immigrant children in general.
