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Tag: rachel maddow
Mary Trump

Trump Niece: 'Of Course' I Heard Him Use The N-Word

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Mary Trump, the president's niece, revealed in an interview with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow that she has heard her uncle use the n-word and anti-Semitic slurs.

A clip of the interview aired on the network ahead of Maddow's show at 9 p.m. Eastern on Thursday night.

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Parnas Indicts Trump In Explosive MSNBC Interview

Parnas Indicts Trump In Explosive MSNBC Interview

In his first media appearance, Lev Parnas — an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani who was a key player in President Donald Trump’s impeachment — gave an explosive interview this week, aired Wednesday night, to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

As is often the case in Trump scandals, the person who has now turned against the president is himself a shady character who is credibly accused of federal crimes, which makes it necessary to treat his claims with due skepticism. Though some of his allegations are corroborated by records and evidence, others are not. Some of his allegations rely on vague allegations and assumptions and given they come from a source with unclear motivations, they should not be taken as definitive fact. But they are in the public record now, and they deserve to be considered. As the Senate gears up for Trump’s impeachment trial, it sets the stage for a testing ground for the accuracy of Parnas’ claims and those of other witnesses.

Maddow also revealed that she will air a second part of the interview the following night.

Here are seven of the most explosive claims Parnas made:

1. “President Trump knew exactly what was going on,” Parnas said. “He was aware of all of my movements. I wouldn’t do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president.”

Trump has claimed that he doesn’t know who Parnas or his associate, Igor Fruman, are, despite appearing in multiple pictures with him. There was already good reason to assume this was false, but Parnas has not directly rebutted the dubious claim on the record.

2. “It was not about corruption,” Parnas said of the Ukraine scheme. “It was all about Burisma, all about Biden, about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.”

This claim completely undercuts the Republicans’ key defenses of the president against impeachment. They say he was legitimately pursuing an anti-corruption policy in Ukraine by asking for investigations of his political enemies. That was hard to believe on its own, but now Parnas is flatly contradicting it.

3. Parnas said it was clear to the Ukrainians he was acting as Trump’s emissary. 

“Did anybody in the U.S. government or Mr. Giuliani actually convey to officials in Ukraine that you were there as a representative of President Trump?” Maddow asked.

“Yes,” said Parnas. “Absolutely. Absolutely. Everyone.”

Guiliani told Maddow that this “never” happened and called Parnas a “sad situation.”

4. He said he made explicit to Ukrainian officials that Trump’s support and financial support — not just military aid — was dependent on an announcement of the investigations the president wanted.

“It wasn’t just military aid,” Parnas said. “It was all aid. Basically their relationships would be sour. That we would stop giving them any kind of aid.”

5. Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to Ukraine was canceled explicitly to induce the country to announce the investigations, Parnas said.

Parnas said that the cancellation of Pence’s trip confirmed to the Ukrainians that he was a legitimate representative of the president. He also said that Pence was “in the loop” about the reason the trip was canceled, but he didn’t explicit say how he knew this. He just indicated the top players were all aware of the plot.

Pence’s later trip to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was arranged to get the country to announce the investigations Trump wanted, Parnas said. However, Pence has denied trying to get Zelensky to conduct the investigations.

6. Attorney General Bill Barr was “on the team.”

Barr has also tried to distance himself entirely from the Ukraine scandal. But Parnas claimed that “Barr had to know about everything” regarding the plan to push Ukraine to investigate the Biden and the 2016 presidential election. He acknowledged, though, that he didn’t speak to Barr directly.

Maddow pointed out that, in his infamous July 25 phone call with Zelensky, Trump specifically brought up Barr as being involved. Parnas said that didn’t surprise him, because Barr was “on the team.” The Justice Department, responding to Maddow’s request for comment on the allegations, said simply: “100 percent false.”

7. Parnas also fingered Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) in the scheme, the ranking Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee that investigated the Ukraine matter.

Parnas said he was introduced to, and worked through, Nunes aide Derek Harvey, but he was working on Nunes’ behalf.

“Does it strike you as unusual or inappropriate that Devin Nunes would be one of the lead investigators?” Maddow asked.

“I was in shock when I was watching the hearings and when I saw Devin Nunes sitting up there,” Parnas said. “Because they were involved in getting all this stuff on Biden.”

#EndorseThis: Trump White House Official Crushed By Maddow For Ugly Parkland Comment

#EndorseThis: Trump White House Official Crushed By Maddow For Ugly Parkland Comment

Let’s admit it. Sometimes, trolls on social media seem happy when something terrible happens, so long as it makes the other side look bad. Whether it’s fires, floods or a housing crisis, a reprehensible minority of Twitter users react with glee, so long as the story hurts their political opponents. Reasonable Americans tune it out – we’ve come to expect it.

But we usually don’t expect it from the White House. Unfortunately, nothing is out-of-bounds in the Trump era.

Rachel Maddow’s newest viral monologue calls out a current White House official for telling The Washington Post that the  administration got a “reprieve” due to the unimaginable terror of last week’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

Even worse, the official wasn’t just speaking for themselves. Listen to Maddow’s tremendous take-down of the sickos at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as she exposes the unfeeling nihilism of the Trump team.

Liberals Find Community — And That Could Be Big

Liberals Find Community — And That Could Be Big

During the presidential campaign, many Hillary Clinton voters in Atlanta’s suburbs thought they were alone. That was an easy conclusion to draw because few felt comfortable putting Clinton signs on their front lawns or expressing their political preference at parties. Their neighbors seemed overwhelmingly Republican.

It took the presidency of Donald Trump to shock them out of their quietude. They emerged from the bunkers, blinking and surprised to find they had so much company. Many are now harnessing their distress to their newly discovered numbers and going activist. They are thus giving a 30-year-old novice named Jon Ossoff a fighting chance to win the congressional seat recently vacated by Republican Tom Price, Trump’s secretary of health.

This wouldn’t be happening without Trump. Today’s scenes of environmental degradation and Russian infiltration — under the tweeting fingers of a possibly mad emperor — would wake the political dead. They have electrified a left prone to battling itself over deviations in liberal scripture but also a center wanting nothing more than a day of normal news.

In other times, #resistance might come off as a bit melodramatic. Trump world has made it feel downright mainstream.

Trump has thus transformed the liberal ranks from stray cats to packs of dogs. Dogs act bolder when traveling in numbers. Dogs want community.

Participants in the women’s marches in January recall the events not so much for stoking anger but for providing comfort. The throngs of peaceful marchers overwhelmed the few radicals ready to rumble. Their sense of well-being came from communing with so many ordinary women — and men — who felt as they did.

Like the Tea Party right, liberals are flocking to their own media campfires for warmth, talking points, and calls to action. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow is now edging out the troubled king of right-wing palaver, Bill O’Reilly, in total audience. (She has long dominated him in the coveted 25- to 54-year-old demographic.)

On CBS, Stephen Colbert has become the go-to guy for smart and witty late-night commentary from a liberal perspective. As such, he is bringing younger audiences back to network TV.

And in a shoutout to “CBS Evening News,” let us praise anchor Scott Pelley. His willingness to tell what’s really happening with minimal dramatics and apparently little concern about being attacked by the right is refreshing.

The surprise hit podcast of 2017 — “Pod Save America” — stars three luminaries from the Obama administration. It offers lively and interesting political chat — but nothing that would have seemed earth-shattering before Nov. 8. Now it’s vacuuming up audiences and advertising.

Speaking of which, it was interesting to see how quickly major advertisers deserted O’Reilly’s show after reports of the host’s penchant for serial sexual harassment. In doing so, they must have considered the perils of displeasing his avid fan base. On the other hand, how many millions of women were marching?

The Tea Party’s membership was never huge in numbers, but the movement knew how to turn communal passions into political clout. Members jeered politicians and joined enthusiastic protests. But their real power came from marching as a group to party primaries and other elections that less engaged voters ignored.

Democrats hope to use that strategy in the special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. Ossoff is currently running against several Republicans. Should he get more than 50 percent of the vote, he’d take a storied seat once inhabited by former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Political revolutions don’t happen on Twitter. They happen when like-minded citizens join to vote.

As jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron famously vocalized, “The revolution will not be televised…The revolution will be live.”