- MSNBC host Chris Hayes predicted that the US is about to experience "two of the most remarkable, consequential years in the Republic's history" at Business Insider's IGNITION conference on Tuesday.
- The liberal political commentator argued that entering and living in the US without documentation is less dangerous than driving over the speed limit; that President Donald Trump's positions on international trade are rooted in a "sincerely felt and long held" worldview; and that California Sen. Kamala Harris could be the next president.
MSNBC host Chris Hayes predicted that the US will experience "two of the most remarkable, consequential years in the Republic's history" in the second half of President Donald Trump's first term during a wide-ranging discussion on Tuesday at Business Insider's annual IGNITION conference.
The liberal host of the nightly primetime program "All In With Chris Hayes" made a host of arguments - among them his assertion that entering and living in the US without documentation is less dangerous than driving over the speed limit; that Trump's positions on international trade are rooted in a "sincerely felt and long held" worldview; and that California Sen. Kamala Harris could be the next president.
Hayes told INSIDER CEO Henry Blodget that while it's reasonable for some Americans to believe that millions of people shouldn't live in the country without documentation, much of this sentiment "often emanates from a true lack of familiarity of the way the system works."
The cable news host said that if there's one area of agreement he has with Trump it's that "a posture of trade hawkishness against China is not at all crazy and not at all unjustified." Hayes argued that the president's positions on trade and his support for tariffs are "sincerely felt and long held" and rooted in Trump's "deeply mercantilist" worldview that "everything is zero sum."
But Hayes also said he doesn't trust the president to navigate complicated diplomacy with the world's third-largest economy, the mishandling of which could lead to a cold war with China.
On 2020: Kamala Harris is 'underpriced'
Many political pundits are asking whether the Democratic 2020 presidential nominee should be a centrist or a leftist. Hayes said this is the wrong question in the Trump era and that "candidate quality" and "building broad and inclusive messages" is more important to the majority of American voters than the candidate's political ideology.
"I do think there's a conventional wisdom that being too far to the left is a kind of dispositive attribute for a candidate and I think ideological dispositive blockers are off the table," he said. "There is no position, in an ideological fashion, that a candidate can take that would render them unelectable."
Hayes wouldn't predict who the 2020 nominee will be, but said a potential bid by Harris - California's former attorney general who said this week that she'll make her decision about whether to run in the next month - has been underestimated thus far.
"If you asked me to place a $100 bet based on the field and the candidate, I think Kamala Harris is underpriced," he said.
Hayes also argued that conservatives are often hypocritical when it comes to political correctness - and that public discourse should be polite, but not suffocating.
"No one thinks about 'don't criticize George H.W. Bush because he just died' as an example of political correctness, but of course it is. It's exactly the same sort of thing," Hayes said, pointing to the criticism he received for evaluating the former president's legacy shortly after his death on Friday.
You can watch Chris Hayes talk with Henry Blodget at IGNITION here:
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