Rachel Maddow Draws Direct Line From Paul Manafort’s Trial To The Trump Campaign

While Donald Trump and his legal team are trying to separate the president and his campaign from the ongoing legal troubles facing Paul Manafort, Rachel Maddow drew a direct line between the two on Tuesday.

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Citing court proceedings this week, the MSNBC host noted that Manafort appears to have used his position on the Trump campaign to sell – for cash – a high-level job running the U.S. Army.

“[Manafort] really did apparently sell the promise of a job running the United States Army in exchange for cash,” Maddow said. “That apparently really happened.”

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Maddow explained:

I mean as crazy as it has seemed from the very beginning, as far-fetched and laugh out loud ridiculous as this allegation has seemed ever since it was hinted at in the press that there was some connection between Paul Manafort’s weird bank fraud allegations and his time on the Trump campaign and the Army, it really looks like one of the things that happened on the Donald Trump for president campaign is that the campaign chairman really did apparently sell the promise of a job running the United States Army in exchange for cash. That apparently really happened. I wonder how the Army feels about that.

Manafort used his campaign position to sell an army job

There are some aspects of the ongoing Paul Manafort trial that are certainly separate from his work on the Trump campaign. But as Maddow pointed out on Tuesday, there are still some crucial connections.

It’s been clear for some time that Paul Manafort was in dire financial straits when he joined the Trump campaign. The trial has only confirmed that fact, which makes it even more puzzling that Manafort supposedly wasn’t paid for his work running Trump’s operation.

But if what we’re learning about Manafort’s time as Trump’s campaign chairman is true, maybe he wasn’t working for free after all. He was just using his position on the campaign to sell off jobs in the future Trump government.

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.