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MSNBC Guest Claims 20% Of Americans Are ‘White Nationalists’

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A guest on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” claimed that one-fifth of Americans are “white nationalists” during a Wednesday morning appearance.

“I think that there is a 20% of America that basically is white nationalists. That in recent years felt permission to act out on that, and were given permission by the president and the Republican Party,” Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas Ricks told host Joe Scarborough.

“I think you’re seeing a lot of concern among Americans these days that democracy is under attack,” Ricks said, discussing former President Donald Trump’s efforts to contest the results of the 2020 election.

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Ricks made the comments in the wake of a series of attacks on supporters of former President Donald Trump by President Joe Biden. Biden accused Republicans of embracing “semi-fascism” during Aug. 25 remarks at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Maryland, then attacked “MAGA Republicans” during an Aug. 30 speech in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, before he called Trump supporters a “threat to democracy” in a Thursday speech in Philadelphia.

“I’m thinking about Buffalo. I’m thinking about the senseless murder justified by or motivated by the Great Replacement language. I’m thinking about the underlying causes,” Eddie Glaube, Jr., said before Ricks’s comments, referencing a May 14 mass shooting in a grocery store. “This general sense that there’s a cultural and demographic threat that drives much of what we’ve seen.”

“I think the large bulk of Americans don’t like white nationalism, especially violent white nationalism, and they are reacting to it now and saying ‘enough is enough,’” Ricks said. “’You people go back under your rock.’”