Rachel Maddow blasted Donald Trump on Wednesday as he again tried to play dumb after a bombshell report found that a data firm hired by his campaign reached out to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Maddow said the administration’s instinct to immediately distance itself from the analytics company is probably a good sign that today’s report is true.
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Rachel #Maddow Catches Trump Red-Handed As He Plays Dumb After Damning New #Russia Revelation pic.twitter.com/e5bnaeTYUL
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— Sean Colarossi (@SeanColarossi) October 26, 2017
Maddow said:
As more and more ties are proven between the Russian government and the Russia campaign to affect our election and all of these different people and entities involved in the Trump for President campaign, it’s starting to feel like one way you can know that something is a very salient story and a provable point they’re not going to be able to get away from is when the Trump White House or the Trump campaign starts denying all knowledge of the people and entities involved. … And as these things keep happening, it is harder to dismiss all of them as coincidences. They can’t all be random people who walked in off the street that the Trump campaign never noticed.Â
Maddow’s explanation of this worn-out Trump strategy to deny knowledge of people and organizations that were heavily involved in the campaign comes after the Daily Beast reported that Alexander Nix of Cambridge Analytica – a data firm hired by Trump during the campaign – contacted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to see if they could help release Hillary Clinton’s emails.
The report said the communication between Nix and Assange is “the closest known connection between Trump’s campaign and Wikileaks.”
More from that report:
Alexander Nix, who heads a controversial data-analytics firm that worked for President Donald Trump’s campaign, wrote in an email last year that he reached out to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange about Hillary Clinton’s missing 33,000 emails.
…
Nix, who heads Cambridge Analytica, told a third party that he reached out to Assange about his firm somehow helping the WikiLeaks editor release Clinton’s missing emails, according to two sources familiar with a congressional investigation into interactions between Trump associates and the Kremlin. (CNN later reported Cambridge backer Rebekah Mercer was one of the email’s recipients.) Those sources also relayed that, according to Nix’s email, Assange told the Cambridge Analytica CEO that he didn’t want his help, and preferred to do the work on his own.
The interchange between Nix—whose company made millions from the Trump campaign—and Assange represents the closest known connection between Trump’s campaign and Wikileaks.
The public reporting on the Trump-Russia connection continues to be more damning with each passing day, and it’s likely that special counsel Robert Mueller has access to even more information that isn’t yet known to the public.
As Maddow pointed out on Wednesday, the administration’s adherence to this play-dumb strategy after yet another bombshell report was published isn’t fooling anybody anymore – and it’s pretty good indication that these stories are true.
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.
