MSNBC host Rachel Maddow predicted American allies would stop sharing intelligence due to America “switching sides” to favor Russia early Wednesday morning shortly before former President Donald Trump clinched the presidency.
Former President Donald Trump won reelection, with Fox News predicting he had secured the necessary 270 electoral votes to secure the presidency early Wednesday morning. Maddow said that Trump would be “supporting Russia” in its war with Ukraine.
“Intelligence sharing between America and our traditional allies is likely going to end. The whole five eyes thing is likely going to end,” Maddow claimed. “If you’ve got America switching sides in the Ukraine-Russia war to instead support Russia or to become neutral, which means in this case would be to support Russia.”
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“If you’ve got ongoing secret communications even out of government between the Republican nominee and the person who funded his campaign and led his ground game, right?” Maddow continued.
“Both of whom are communicating with the Russian government without reporting that information to the U.S. government, and on top of that, you’ve got reporting from the New York Times that they’re considering once there is a second Trump administration, if it happens, to stop performing background checks before giving people security clearance, meaning giving classified information to anyone.”
MSNBC hosts and guests routinely hyped the claims that Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with the Russian government to defeat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and repeatedly had Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, who often made claims about alleged collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia, on the air. The Steele Dossier, which was used to further allegations of collusion, was later discredited.
“That’s supposedly at the instigation of a Trump campaign official who was born in Moscow, who was unable to get a security clearance in the first Trump term, who has had multiple arrests and is reportedly on top of a short list to be White House counsel and he is the one who proposed to get rid of all background checks for security clearances, which means handing out classified information on the corner,” Maddow said.
“You are not going to have American allies who have been relying on us as the pinnacle intelligence agency in the world since World War II,” Maddow continued.
“You are not going to have continued sharing of information with a new administration that has an open line with Vladimir Putin and that is going to essentially be willing to handle classified information the way the man who was indicted for handling it the way he did it at Mar-a-Lago at the top, and with handling security clearances the way they’ve been reportedly described.”
Special counsel Jack Smith unsealed a superseding indictment on July 27, 2023, that included charges against Carlos De Oliveira, a maintenance worker at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida estate owned by Trump after the special counsel initially secured a 37-count indictment against Trump and aide Walter Nauta the previous June.
