‘Uncharted waters in terms of presidential corruption’: Maddow breaks down Trump’s Turnberry scandal

MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow reported Friday on the “jaw-dropping” story of the U.S. military diverting C-17 cargo flights to President Donald Trump’s golf course in Scotland.

“This story just came out within the last hour. If you have not seen it yet, you are going to want to sit down. You are going to want to spend a little bit of time with this,” Maddow suggested.

This is the headline from Politico, ‘Air Force crew made an odd stop on a routine trip: Trump’s Scottish resort’” Maddow reported.

The host read from the story, which she described as "an incredible scoop."

“In early spring of this year, an Air National Guard crew made a routine trip from the U.S. to Kuwait to deliver supplies. What wasn’t routine was where the crew stopped along the way: President Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort, about 50 miles outside Glasgow, Scotland,” the report said. “Since April, the House Oversight Committee has been investigating why the crew on the C-17 military transport plane made the unusual stay — both en route to the Middle East and on the way back — at the luxury waterside resort, according to several people familiar with the incident.”

Maddow also read the most shocking quote from the story.

“Taken together, the incidents raise the possibility that the military has helped keep Trump’s Turnberry resort afloat — the property lost $4.5 million in 2017, but revenue went up $3 million in 2018,” Politico reported.

Maddow was shocked.

“I mean, this is just — I mean, the implication in the brand-new reporting from Politico is that Trump’s, you know, got this money-losing resort in Florida to which he now wants to direct the G7. He’s got this money-losing golf resort in Ireland, which he has already directed Vice President Pence and his entourage … now, in addition, he has a money-losing resort in Scotland that was about to lose the money-losing airport that serviced it,” she explained.

“I mean, the golf course is already having really tough times, if they lose the nearest airport, too,” she noted.

“But now, miraculously, now that Donald Trump is president, American military cargo planes have started refueling at that airport, at a significant price mark up. Right. It’s much cheaper for them to get their fuel at military bases. That’s part of the reason they always stop at military bases. Also, they’re the military. They’re no longer stopping at military bases,” Maddow noted.

“Instead they’re stopping at the airport that Trump needs to prop up to keep his Scottish golf resort going and paying full freight commercial airport rates for that fuel. And then they’re sending the aircrews to go stay at the president’s resort,” she explained.

The implications are huge.

“If the U.S. military is being used to prop up one of the president’s troubled properties, A, this is uncharted waters, obviously, in terms of presidential corruption, B, this implicates the president himself, obviously, and everybody else who participated in it. This Scotland part with the C-17s, flying into the airport at Glasgow implicates the military who apparently went along with this, didn’t peep about it, and now isn’t cooperating with congressional oversight committees that are trying to investigate it,” Maddow noted.

One of the reporters who broke the story, Natasha Bertrand, called the scandal “remarkably brazen” when interviewed by the host.

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