MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow focused the opening of her show on the ramifications of Donald Trump's corruption and authoritarianism. “What Trump is proposing to do here in America, to the media, is what [Vladimir] Putin, of course, has already done in Russia,” Maddow explained. Trump’s supporters continue to try to obfuscate his recent comments fantasizing about using the federal government’s might in order to silence and punish what he perceives as the "enemy from within” our country—his political critics. “This is not normal American stuff. This is not American at all,” Maddow said after detailing some of Trump’s more specific threats to various media outlets that have reported critically on him from CBS to The New York Times. “This is a strongman, authoritarian form of government, stuff which our Constitution protects us from explicitly.” Added to this mix, Maddow explained, is the abject corruption Trump is involved with. One glaring example is Trump’s son-in-law and former jack-of-all-trades adviser, Jared Kushner. Kushner received $2 billion from Saudi Arabia as an investment in his equity firm. Democrats launched an investigation in June into the seemingly transparent conflict of interest. "If you wanted to create a kindergarten-level textbook to explain to a kindergartner what corruption is, right? This is how you spell it out,” Maddow said. “Now imagine your friend is running for president. Somebody gives your friend a huge sweet business deal while he's running for president, and that same someone then gives your friend's family billions of dollars while he's running for president. ‘C’ is for corruption. Your friend is corrupt, right?” And that money comes with a price, Maddow explains, giving an example of the soft reporting done by Saudi state-controlled media recently. It seems Trump did an interview with a Saudi media outlet that didn't get much traction in the U.S. That lack of coverage, Maddow notes, could have something to do with the insipid headline that followed the interview: "Trump says Middle East peace possible if elected, plans to extend Abraham accords." “You will be surprised to learn that that was not the actual newsworthy takeaway from that interview with Saudi state-controlled media,” Maddow reports. In fact, she continues by showing clips of Trump’s rambling cruelty about making deals with Hamas and how he claimed hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 are probably all dead anyway: Trump: Now, still, you have hostages, but many of them have been killed, and I'm sure many of them are dead. I think even early on, I think a lot of those hostages were dead. I think they were dead. [...] I would have made a deal with them and they wouldn't have done Oct. 7. "You know, Michael Dukakis's presidential campaign cratered because he put on a helmet that made his head look like a little bean, made his face look short,” Maddow pointed out. “Donald Trump pretended to work at a McDonald's this weekend while wearing this lovely ensemble. And then the next day, he said, all the hostages are dead, and I want to do a deal with Hamas.” You couldn’t find enough monkeys with typewriters to make this story up. YouTube Video Let's get to work electing Kamala Harris our next President! Sign up for as many shifts as you can between now and November 5 to talk with progressive voters in key states who might not turn out without hearing from you!
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/22/2278646/-Not-normal-American-stuff-Watch-Rachel-Maddow-expertly-expose-Trump?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=main