Rachel Maddow Nails Trump Campaign For Repeatedly Promising To Lift Russian Sanctions

Rachel Maddow connected more dots in the ongoing Russia scandal on Wednesday, saying that there is no longer any doubt what the Russians wanted to get out of their many contacts with the Trump team during the campaign.

According to the MSNBC host, each revealed meeting between Trump’s campaign and Russian operatives had an underlying focus on the U.S. lifting sanctions for Russia if Trump was successful in defeating Hillary Clinton.

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Maddow said:

Bottom line, that weird Flynn nuclear deal appears to have been about Russian sanctions. The secret Ukraine peace deal cooked up by Trump’s personal lawyer and a Russian guy … appears to have been about Russian sanctions. The Seychelles secret meeting with Erik Prince and the Russian guy appears to have been about Russian sanctions. The Trump Tower meeting was about sancations. What Flynn lied to the FBI about. Sanctions. What Vice President Mike Pence lied to the American public about. Sanctions. Now, apparently what the president and his son are pretending to be lawyers about is how they cooked up their public statements about that meeting, that was about sanctions. So a lot of news going on right now. … But with the news we got today, it at least finally seems clear that we at least now know what Russia was after from their side. It seems indubitably clear what the quo was that they were trying to get in any quid pro quo from the Trump campaign.

Clearly, at multiple points during the campaign, Trump-connected associates were suggesting they would lift sanctions that have been crippling Russia. This is something we now know to be undeniably true.

The major question left to be proven is what the Trump team was expecting in return – what they would get (or got) for promising to lift these crippling punishments imposed by the previous administration.

The more we learn about the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia and the longer the Robert Mueller investigation goes on, the more it looks like what the president’s team was getting in return was help in defeating Hillary Clinton last fall.

Sean Colarossi

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.