Trump Attacks On Criminal Cases May Be Setting Stage For Pardons | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC

Rachel Maddow and an MSNBC panel discuss the implications of Donald Trump's use of William Barr to interfere in criminal cases in which he has a personal interest. Aired on 02/11/20.
» 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:

Trump Attacks On Criminal Cases May Be Setting Stage For Pardons | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC

53 comments

    1. mptemplin Wow. How long did it take to reach to such astounding level of stupidity. You REALLY believe everything Trump tells you, don’t you? Whew! Everybody has the right to be stupid. But you have abused your privilege. I’m embarrassed FOR you.

      “Tell a lie loud enough and long enough, and people will believe you” Adolf Hitler

  1. 4 distinguished prosecutors walked out of their Position in protest against the trump’s Justice Department

    1. These 4 prosecutors are not “never Trumpers”. They are completely bipartisan. Wtf… is this not a huge sign of corruption?

  2. GET THESE CROOKS OUT OF POWER SOONER THAN LATER, BECAUSE THEY’RE CRIMINALLY INSANE, AND COMMITTING CRIMES WITH NO BLAME, NEVER HIDING ANYTHING WHILE LOOKING FOR FAME ! 😎

    1. @ma,ma gee’s gospel Oh wake up!! Obamas Administration did the same thing…remember ” I don’t need Congress, I have a pen and a phone, I’ll do it myself. Only a moron or a blind person couldn’t see that. And what Hillary Clinton did?? You dont even want to go there…

    2. @Carl Painter YOU ARE A D*M LIAR JUST LIKE YOUR CULT LEADER TRUMP, IF OBAMA WOULD HAD DONE 1 PERCENT OF WHAT TRUMP’S ALREADY DONE THEY WOULD HAVE CALLED FOR HIS HEAD TOO BE PUT ON A PLATTER, THOSE DIRTY RACIST BIGOTS, AND OBAMA WILL ALWAYS LIVE RENT FREE IN YA’LLS HEADS !🤔😁😂👎

    3. @Tylorian SAID THE STUPID BRAINWASHED TRUMPTER WHO FOLLOWS A NARCISSISTIC, CRIMINALLY INSANE CONMAN LET HIM LEAD AND DICTATE Y’ALL, BUT HE’LL NEVER LEAD AND DICTATE US ALL ! 😡🤔👎

  3. If only there were some sort of warning signs Trump would react this way. I mean really who would have ever seen this coming Susan Collins?

    1. @A V I certainly wish that were true. You went to school in Canada? Since your a scholar in politics lets talk about the geography, economics, and demography as it relates to the Trump presidency.

    2. @Timothy Emory#300003 Sure, people’s 401K’s have gone up by an average of 65% in both the States and Canada over the last 18 months for starters. I can’t speak for joblessness in your rural areas, here is the same as before. And yes Canada’s economy is very tightly linked the the US’s, despite what other uneducated Canadians might tell you. do you honestly think Sanders will reduce your deficit with his radical Socialist policies? Who do you think is the best current Democratic candidate economy-wise? Here in Canada helath care is “free”, and guess what? It sucks s**t. We had 4 fentanyl-related deaths over the weekend in a city of 190,000 people, because the hospital ran out of naloxone kits, and the wait time in emergency rooms is on average 6-8 hours. Is this your vision of a free health utopia for the US? I sure hope not.

    3. @Timothy Emory#300003 Even if Sanders only wants a Liberal Democracy like in the Nordic countries, those policies will work when the population of a country is 15 million or less. Not made to fit bigger countries.

    4. Trump: Drain the swamp! Reality: Filling the swamp with more monsters and take over of the spineless GOP Senate and now the DOJ! Vote 2020 like your Constitution depends on it.

    1. @Karl K Present yourself at the nearest Psychiatric Hospital asap. You have had a psychotic break and are currently living in an alternate Universe (a bit like those alternate facts!). Either that’s what’s happened or you are an imbecile.

  4. “May Be Setting Stage…” There’s no “may” about it! He will pardon every one of his sleazy associates!!!

    1. @PK Cazadores if you dont think there is something wrong with what is going on, and think it is all just everyday politics, you need to give your head a shake a start realizing, the elite are playing by different rules than the rest of you. something is very, very seriously wrong and people are loosing their right for choice. especially when there is no good choice. the whole system is broken.

    1. “Accountability?” The GOP has gone well past accountability, to outright complicity. I’m still waiting for Trump to “pivot” to being a dignified human being, much less a world leader. Trump is 100% insane, period. Trump’s daily barrage of hate speech and malice is not fit for civil society, much less public service. Trump only ever serves himself; and, if you think about it, Trump clearly doesn’t even consider his own best interests. And yet, faced with a torrent of corruption and self-dealing, in plain sight, the GOP is now in full lockstep with Trump’s autocracy. Which tells us that another shoe is yet to drop. It should be harder than this to get 51 senators to completely abdicate. As ever always, follow the money… because nothing else makes any sense. It’s high time we conduct a thorough audit into the finances of all of these creatures – masquerading as public servants.

    2. Don’t waste energy. Create alternative communities. This federation’s goin down. Find your tribe. Law will be Regional. We r broken. Face it.

  5. “Institutions alone are not enough to rein in elected autocrats. Constitutions must be defended, by political parties and organized citizens but also by democratic norms. Without robust norms, constitutional checks and balances do not serve as the bulwarks of democracy we imagine them to be. Institutions become political weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not.

    This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy – packing and “weaponizing” the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence) and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy, gradually, subtly, and even legally, eliminate it.

    Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one.”
    How Democracies Die –by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

    “The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you, would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked, but only that they be spineless.” 
    ― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

    “In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.” 
    ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

  6. “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”
    ―Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

    Umberto Eco Makes a List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism:
    1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
    2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
    3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
    4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
    5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
    6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
    7. The obsession with a plot. “The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”
    8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
    9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
    10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
    11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
    12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
    13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
    14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”
    http://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html

    “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”
    — Frederick Douglass

    “…In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience…” ―Kwame Ture

    “Sociopaths cannot love, by definition they do not have higher values, and they almost never feel comfortable in their own skins. They are loveless, amoral, and chronically bored, even the few who become rich and powerful.”
    ― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door

    “When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government”
    ― Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence

  7. What’s concerning is they’re doing it openly now. They have primed their supporters for corruption. There’s a next stage. Scary times folks. Especially for people of color. Don’t be idle about this. Stay tuned and be ready. Trump could be a Hilter 2.0. We are like the frog in boiling water. Be ready!

    1. And still no protests, no masses on the streets… from the outside it looks like people of the USA are fine with it all and just go along smh really astonishing how you people of USA let one evil sick old man run the country into the dark and you just follow or look the other way or both. Makes me all so sad.

    2. @Hello Human Being because people only care when people start dieing 🤷🏻‍♂️ Trump is not that strong tho. Neither are his supporters

  8. What did those sellout senators do to America? Are they, like McConnell and Collins, gloating and grinning about what’s happening? It’s so effing Crazy!

  9. There is a creeping culture of impunity and corruption that’s shaking your institutions. These are times of danger

    1. Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Strzok … all lied under oath .. zero indictments. Why is the harshest federal sentencing reserved only for people associated with Trump? Weird. Maybe the Attorney General needs to look into this apparent bias. What do you think?

    1. Shane Bushta It’s more HONORABLE to quit, than serve a TYRANT. U play HIS game, or you’re GONE. That Line is CLEARER than EVER.

  10. “Bombshell” “walls are closing in” “unprecedented” “impeachable offence”

    I don’t think those things mean what you think they mean 😂

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.