Rachel Maddow praises President Obama for treating prisoners like actual human beings

"He's been talking about prisons as places that some Americans call home"

Published July 16, 2015 1:59PM (EDT)

 Rachel Maddow   (MSNBC)
Rachel Maddow (MSNBC)

Rachel Maddow took a few moments during her show on Wednesday to explain why it really is a huge deal that President Obama commuted the sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders this week, ahead of a planned trip to a U.S. federal prison facility in Oklahoma on Thursday. Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit an American prison, which is monumental on its own -- but, as Maddow pointed out this week, the president's attitude toward prison reform makes it even more historic.

"President Obama has been talking about prisons in a way that politicians really never talk about them," Maddow said. "He's been talking about prisons as places that some Americans call home, even though none of the people who have to call prison home, want to do that."

"It is remarkable enough that a U.S. president is visiting a prison," she added. "But to hear a president talk about prisoners as fellow Americans, as fellow human beings -- that is something we are not used to hearing either."

Watch Maddow on Obama's prison visit below:


By Jenny Kutner

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