Rachel Maddow obliterated Donald Trump on Wednesday, saying that no other president – Republican or Democrat – would have taken the “inconceivable” step of giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a sit-down meeting.
Maddow said the administration’s decision to grant a bilateral, G20 meeting with the Russian president is “unimaginable,” and she laid out the many reasons why Trump shouldn’t show Putin that kind of respect.
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#Maddow slams Trump’s decision to meet with Putin: “What has he done to earn” a meeting with the U.S. president? pic.twitter.com/8qEa6Qb2Qs
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— Sean Colarossi (@SeanColarossi) July 6, 2017
Maddow slammed the president:
How has [Putin] earned a face-to-face, full-scale, bilateral meeting with the U.S. president? What has he done to deserve that meeting and that respect – other than launching a massive cyber attack on our presidential election last year and threatening to shoot down U.S. jets over Syria just a couple weeks ago and sending their Russian fighter jets to buzz American ships and planes all over the world, and these new credible allegations that Russian firms are selling weapons and oil to North Korea, as North Korea is shooting off an ICBM. Other than that, what has Putin done to earn this since Crimea? I don’t know, maybe there is something that Vladimir Putin has done that’s really nice alongside that other stuff, but whatever it is, we the public don’t know about it. And he is, nevertheless, getting a bilateral meeting with the American president because of something.
The MSNBC star added that Trump’s actions on the world stage go beyond party: “Had Jeb Bush become president or any normal Republican become president … it would be inconceivable that any of this that’s happening right now would be happening … In normal Republican politics, let alone in Democratic politics, what is happening today and what will happen over the course of this week is inconceivable. We are in territory now that, until very recently, would have been unimaginable within American politics.”
Because of the secrecy surrounding the Trump administration’s ties to Russia, it’s hard to know exactly why this president is catering to the Kremlin at a time when the U.S. should be taking a tough stance against them.
After all, the Russians did wage an attack on last year’s presidential election, as Maddow pointed out – an attack that we are still trying to get to bottom of.
What we do know, however, is that the Russian cyber attack helped Trump win last year’s election, and Trump has a hard time shunning anybody that helps him advance his own self-interest.
For Donald Trump, there is no contest between protecting America’s democracy and rewarding those who help him gain personally – he will choose himself every single time.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
