Fmr. Prosecutor: Trump ‘Doing What Predators Do,’ That’s ‘Grooming Victims’ | The Last Word | MSNBC

Barbara McQuade argues to Lawrence O’Donnell that Trump's new round of commutations and pardons is to desensitize "the public to this idea that corruption is not a big deal" so it'll be more palatable when Trump decides to pardon his corrupt friends, like Roger Stone. Aired on 02/18/20.
» Subscribe to MSNBC:

MSNBC delivers breaking news, in-depth analysis of politics headlines, as well as commentary and informed perspectives. Find video clips and segments from The Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, Meet the Press Daily, The Beat with Ari Melber, Deadline: White House with Nicolle Wallace, Hardball, All In, Last Word, 11th Hour, and more.

Connect with MSNBC Online
Visit msnbc.com:
Subscribe to MSNBC Newsletter:
Find MSNBC on Facebook:
Follow MSNBC on Twitter:
Follow MSNBC on Instagram:

Fmr. Prosecutor: Trump ‘Doing What Predators Do,’ That's ‘Grooming Victims’ | The Last Word | MSNBC

73 comments

    1. Yeah Bernie 2020.. He can win over Trump? Most Americans like their heal care, retirement plans, and other freedoms. Socialism would be a tough push for the majority of people who are non-dependent on welfare.

    1. Lol triggered hacks. Talk about stoking division. Obama pardoned a known terrorist, did the progressive leftist shrill monsters compare Obama with a predator?

    2. @Mark bodman try to keep up obama is out of politics your master is president deflection is a very weak argument

  1. TRUMP’S HELPING THEM SO WHEN HE’S TRIED FOR HIS CRIME’S AGAIN, AND WALK AWAY IT WILL SEEM LIKE NORMAL BEHAVIOR, WHEN IT’S REALLY COMPLETE LAWLESSNESS ! 👎

    1. @REAL BLACKS KNOW THE TRUTH SAID THE LITTLE DERANGED TRUMPTER, I KNOW YOU WANT TO TAKE UP FOR YOUR CRIMINAL HERO NO MATTER WHAT I SAY, IT WILL NEVER GET THROUGH YOUR DELUSIONAL HEAD ! 😁👎

    2. @ma,ma gee’s gospel answer the question! I know you don’t know anything about law and you don’t know anything about breaking the law because if you did you’d already know that each little is contingent to each state clearly and this is no lie that you cannot walk around with a ice cream cone in your pocket on a Sunday! But in another state that’s not a law so what are you referring to in terms of knowing what the law is has different laws dummy

    3. @REAL BLACKS KNOW THE TRUTH SAID THE STUPID BRAINWASHED DERANGED TRUMPTER WHO FOLLOWS A NARCISSISTIC, CRIMINALLY INSANE, CONMAN, BUT YET THINKS HE KNOWS THE LAW AND TRUMP AND HIS REGIME, SHOULD BE ABLE TOO BREAK ANY LAW THEY WANT WITH ABSOLUTELY NO CONSEQUENCES , PLEASE LET TRUMP CONTINUE TO DICTATE Y’ALL, BECAUSE HE’LL NEVER DICTATE US ALL ! 😁👎

    1. Na not many embezzlers pardoned under Trump. But how many thousands of embezzlers and traffickers did Obama release? I can’t even count personally.

  2. “He looks like anybody you see on the street. But when he grins, birds fall dead off telephone lines…the grass yellows up and dies where he spits. He’s always outside. He came out of time…He has the name of a thousand demons. Jesus knocked him into a herd of pigs once. His name is Legion. He’s afraid of us…He knows magic. He can call the wolves and live in the crows…He’s the king of nowhere.”
    ― Stephen King, The Stand

    1. But trump is JUST A WEAK WORTHLESS SHELL AND A WASTE OF HUMAN BREATH . HE NOT GOD , HE IS JUST A VIOLENT, IGNORANT , AND REVENGEFUL DICKHEAD!! . AND HE WILL BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE .

    1. Lol triggered hacks. Talk about stoking division. Obama pardoned a known terrorist, did the progressive leftist shrill monsters compare Obama with a predator.
      TDS is only helping to get Trump re-elected, thank you for your support.
      #trump46jr

    1. @Mark bodman same bull%$@t different name…who cares again about you say…yeah…no one…hahaga
      …🤣

    2. Yes when is this Dam nightmare just fcking end. The stress level of this fake presidency and administration is very high. Please let’s unite to end it very soon.

  3. Thats what happens in third world countries lol lawlessness from dictator… sad. But then again the US IS a third world country so…. no surprises.

    1. @Dave Waldon ouch lol i think the russian bot algorithm is broken… cause that did make a lick of sense…
      Then again you just might be an american that learned from public school….I heard your dictator say they are CRAP! lol

  4. Trump is concerned that his convicted partners in crime, Stone and Flynn, will turn on him if they have to do long prison sentences.
    In December 2015, Flynn, who was briefly Trump’s national security adviser got paid $45,000 plus expenses for attending a gala dinner in Moscow and giving an interview. Details of the contract didn’t become available until after he resigned. According to the U.S. intelligence community, RT, formerly Russia Today, is a Putin regime propaganda machine that gets nearly $200 million in direct Kremlin financing annually.

    In the IC’s January 6 assessment of how Russia interfered with the U.S. election, RT was described as having “contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to international audiences,” including U.S. viewers.

    The assessment noted that during the campaign, RT “consistently cast Trump as the target of unfair coverage from traditional U.S. media outlets that it claimed were subservient to a corrupt political establishment.” At the same time, “RT’s coverage of Clinton throughout the presidential campaign was consistently negative and focused on her leaked e-mails.

    The assessment also included a little-discussed annex that laid out RT’s history of “anti-U.S. messaging” going back to the 2012 election, stating more recent activities are just the latest example of tactics meant to undermine trust in U.S. democracy and undercut U.S. criticism of Russia.

    In the video of the December 2015 dinner celebrating the 10th birthday of Putin’s propaganda  network RT at a  Moscow hotel, Putin and a host of Russian luminaries toasted the state-controlled news channel that U.S. intelligence calls a Kremlin mouthpiece. And next to Putin at the head table, in the seat of honor, was Michael Flynn, who was already advising Trump’s campaign when he was being paid $45,000 to speak at the gala.

    “It is not a coincidence that Flynn was placed next to President Putin,” said Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador in Moscow “Flynn was considered a close Trump adviser. Why else would they want him there?”

    Flanking Putin on his right, two seats from Flynn, sat Alexey Gromov, Putin’s deputy chief of staff. U.S. intelligence considers Gromov to be Putin’s head propagandist. According to the January 6 Intelligence Community report on Russian interference in the U.S. election. He too was on U.S. and European sanctions the day of the dinner.

    After Putin got up to make his speech, his place at Flynn’s side was taken by Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief. A personal friend of Putin, she worked in one of his presidential campaigns before being chosen by Gromov to head RT. U.S. intelligence assessment of RT paints Simonyan as the lead person, along with Gromov, engaging in information warfare against U.S. policies. She is described as closely tied to, controlled by the Kremlin. When Putin finished his speech that night, Flynn was among the first to leap to his feet and offer a standing ovation.

    The IC also noted cooperation between the Kremlin, Russian intelligence services and RT’s editors. Quoting Simonyan, the annex noted that her boss, Putin’s Deputy Chief of Staff Aleksey Gromov, would share classified information and discuss coverage plans in meetings with RT managers.

    Steve Bannon’s contacts with Stone during the 2016 campaign was one of the featured parts of Stone’s trial.

    “I think we did, yes,” said Bannon, when asked during Stone’s trial whether the Trump campaign viewed Stone as its “access point” to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

    Stone’s denials of having any contact with WikiLeaks was undercut by testimony from people like Bannon and a trail of emails and phone records. One message from Aug. 16, 2016, shows Stone telling Bannon on the day he took over as campaign CEO about the prospect that WikiLeaks would drop more damaging documents for the Clinton campaign.

    “I have an idea … to save Trump’s @55,”  Stone wrote.

    Bannon testified that he heard repeatedly from Stone — before he even took over as Trump campaign chief — about his access to WikiLeaks. And Stone kept on talking about the potential of more detrimental materials through the late summer and early fall, at a time when Clinton had the lead in the polls.

    Bannon’s contacts with Stone included an Oct. 4, 2016, exchange after a much-hyped Assange news conference, which fueled the hashtag “October?surprise”  but it turned out to be a bust.

    “It was a big dud, yes,” Bannon said.

    But a few days later, WikiLeaks dumped emails stolen from the Clinton campaign just minutes after The Washington Post published the “Access Hollywood” tape. Bannon described that chain of events as the “Billy Bush weekend” — a reference to Trump bragging about grabbing women by the p..

    1. Mark bodman Donald Trump personally reimbursed Saudi Arabia for the 14 Saudi nationals Osama bin Laden used to hit the twin towers. Supporting terrorism or pardoning one terrorist? Gee, I guess we should give in to and negotiate with terrorists instead of trying to show that we’re better than them. You’re right Trump should be a hero for negotiating with the Taliban, too bad he owns the Al-Qaeda organization. It wasn’t really a negotiation, fake news.

    1. @Alta Pedroza – A law won’t suffice because the President’s pardon power is in the Constitution. It would require a Constitutional Amendment to remove that power.

    1. We can’t forget its his entire admin apparatus. And let’s be real here: trump isn’t the technical brains behind all of this. Its his lawyers working the system unabashed by the optics of it all because ultimately trump is the only optics that matters.

  5. This will al backfire in the long term!
    Accepting pardons is an admission of a crime, and therefore strip away any future 5th Amendment protections. These pardoned people can then be called in Donnie’s future cases and without protection will be forced to talk under severe perjury and non-compliance punishments.

  6. Trump was short circuiting on Twitter today. I mean, he’s always insane, but the insanity was cranked up to 10 today. We have a president who is growing increasingly more unstable and erratic and there’s no one to stop him. It’s getting kinda really scary.

  7. Sad, it gives a whole new meaning to “changing the system from within.” Its been Trump’s goal from the beginning. He’s really set on being a dictator. I’m having a difficult time understanding why people are shocked by what some are calling a “soft coup”. It’s happening in real time. The train has left the station. Can’t believe you eyes, your eyes deceive you not. It would not surprise me one bit if Trump tried to call off the 2020 election. Don’t laugh, this whole mess has gotten out of hand. I don’t care what the people had against HRC or why they hated her so much. She tried to warn America. She could have kept Putin in check and we’d still have a functioning government. Just try to get Trump out of that White House. He’ll declare Martial Law if he loses the 2020 election. He’s the kind of snake that one must completely cut its head off and yet, like a headless snake, he will continue slithering with no head. Obama’s Presidency is likely the last Democratic Presidency we will ever see that will represent our Constitution and our realization of what a Democratic society looked like, however imperfect. God help us all.

    1. Sandra Arnal. Praying can be a very powerful activity and please don’t stop, but I’m afraid in this case it sadly won’t be enough. People power, civil disobedience. But how do you get people on the streets when they are afraid to lose their jobs and other safety worries.
      It is also so very comfortable to do the ‘demonstrating’ on social media.
      It is easy for me to say, I’m not American, but I always had great admiration for the activists and the population ending the Vietnam war and the demonstrators and marchers for the Civil Rights Movement.
      Comparing these momentous events to the situation now, you can not be afraid of this ‘orange yeti’ (plagiarised).
      The crowds will have to literally demonstrate their power and make Trump* and the republicans very afraid and get rid of them.

    2. “Martial” law, not “Marshall Law”. Let’s hope that does not happen, however he would have no support from the military. Martial Law is declared only for national emergencies.

    3. Elsa B This is absolutely true and you touched on a very important point. Trump and his henchman need to feel the power of their opposition. They need to fear their opposition. And so must the corrupt GOP.

    4. @James Dunn Thanks for the correction. Unfortunately, Trump will make anything a national emergency, if it serves him.

  8. Pretty soon the republiklans will start demanding two versions of every law; one for them and corporations, and one for everyone else.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.