While the Mueller report is filled with damning details about Donald Trump’s conduct, Rachel Maddow explained on Thursday why some of the most disturbing information kicks off on page one with the special counsel confirming that Russia did, indeed, meddle in the 2016 election on behalf of Trump.
The most frightening detail of that aspect of the report, according to the MSNBC host, is the fact that Russia recognized right away that Donald Trump would be their best bet to topple U.S. democracy.
“The Russian government was already working on this years-long effort to try to hurt us, to try to somehow specifically infect and rot our electoral system and faith in U.S. democracy. They started working on it, 2014,” Maddow explained. “Then they get their vehicle to glom that ongoing operation onto. And that vehicle is the candidacy of Donald J. Trump.”
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Rachel Maddow says the Mueller report lays out the alarming ways Russia is using Trump to weaken U.S. democracy. #ctl #p2 #maddow pic.twitter.com/PkhDLV66Jw
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) April 19, 2019
Maddow said:
Donald Trump was nowhere near any presidential politics in 2014, but they already literally had operatives here on an intel gathering mission for this ongoing Russian effort. The Russian government was already working on this years-long effort to try to hurt us, to try to somehow specifically infect and rot our electoral system and faith in U.S. democracy. They started working on it, 2014. Then they get their vehicle to glom that ongoing operation onto. And that vehicle is the candidacy of Donald J. Trump. .. That was the Spring 2016 evolution of the overall long-running, years-long running effort to do whatever they could to try to destroy American democracy. Why did they think supporting candidate Donald Trump would do that? I mean, Russia presumably is not trying to make America great again. They’re running an op, an ongoing op that well preceded the Trump effort to try to weaken us as much as they can. When Trump came along, they decided trump was the perfect vehicle to continue and expand that work. How come?
Russia recognized early: Trump is their best bet to take down America
The answer to Maddow’s question is still incomplete. But through his behavior over the past two years, Trump has demonstrated why Russia saw him as “the perfect vehicle” to weaken the United States.
Time and again, Trump has checked off items on Vladimir Putin’s wishlist, whether it’s weakening U.S. sanctions against Russia, straining America’s relationship with our NATO allies, or Trump selling out to the Russian leader on the world stage while simultaneously rejecting his own intelligence community.
While the details of Russia’s attack on America laid out in Mueller’s report should be a disturbing wake-up call for everybody, it should be even more concerning that there is no indication the Kremlin’s efforts to undermine U.S. democracy have stopped.
The man Russia saw as the best way to take down America remains in the White House. That fact alone has likely left Russia more emboldened than ever to continue their long-running operation to topple U.S. democracy.
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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.
