'They may yet do it again': Maddow wallops Republicans for backing 'a person with that kind of track record'

09 June 2023

MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow on Thursday reflected on the news that former President Donald Trump was indicted on seven counts by the United States Department of Justice in the case involving the classified documents that he admitted to taking from the White House and subsequently kept inside his Mar-a-Lago golf club in Palm Beach, Florida.

"Trump is facing a charge under the Espionage Act, his attorney Jim Trusty said on CNN Thursday, as well as charges of obstruction of justice, destruction or falsification of records, conspiracy and false statements," according to CNN.

During her appearance on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, Maddow noted the historical significance of the day's developments.

"This is kind of the main thing that I was thinking about when you asked me to be on the show tonight, Lawrence," Maddow said. "I feel like we should not be blasé about the fact that this is crossing a Rubicon for the country. We are now the kind of country where a former president has been criminally indicted by the federal US Department of Justice. And that has never happened before. And you don't wanna be that kind of country if you don't have to, right? You don't wanna be a kind of country where one of the things that happens is your former leaders go to jail. It just introduces all of this other stuff to your politics that would be better not to have to deal with."

Maddow singled out Republicans for lionizing Trump despite their knowledge of his consequentially transgressive past:

The problem is not, though, that we brought somebody forward in our American national politics who's being treated this way. The problem is that we brought somebody forward in our national politics with these kinds of criminal liabilities.

I mean, as he was going to the White House in 2016, he had to pay $25 million to settle fraud claims about his fake university. Shortly thereafter, he had to pay a multimillion-dollar settlement to shut down his fraudulent fake charity. His business has been criminally convicted as a fraud. His CFO just got out of Rikers. His campaign chairman served time in federal prison as a fraud. His campaign manager is awaiting trial as a fraud on fraud trust.

Like, with a person with that kind of track record, are we surprised that the person at the middle of all of that has been indicted? No, it is not surprising. What is surprising is that we've put that person in the White House and that is the problem. This is a political problem — it's that the pol, the party, the Republican Party has lost the ability to police itself to prevent itself from letting somebody like that become the standard bearer and presidential nominee of their party. That is the problem. That is where the Rubicon is crossed.

Him getting indicted was an inevitability probably from the time that his father first settled with the Justice Department for not renting apartments to Black people. This is the way his life has been built.

The thing that changed in our country, irrevocably, is when the Republican Party put him at the top of their ticket.

And they may yet do it again.

Watch below or at this link.

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