Maddow slams Trump’s era of government officials ‘saving the country from the commander-in-chief’ with leaks

Rachel Maddow on Monday worried about the pattern of government officials leaking to the press to stop President Donald Trump from sabotaging United States' interests to help Russia.

The MSNBC anchor broke down the key questions raised by the bombshell New York Times report that officials were keeping secrets from Trump to protect U.S. interests.

Maddow reminded of a June 2017 story by Michael Isikoff.

"What Isikoff figured out, is that in the very first few days of the Trump Administration, top Trump officials were dispatched to the State Department to immediately tell State Department employees that Trump wanted to unilaterally drop sanctions against Russia. He wanted to get rid of U.S. Sanctions on Russia on his own say-so alone," she explained. "He dispatched top officials to the State Department his first days in office to tell State Department staffers they needed to help put together whatever plans might be necessary to get that done to give Putin what he most wanted."

"The veteran officials decided this was alarming enough behavior that they sound the alarm to other veteran and recently retired State Department officials and they had in plan a motion to let Congress know this was happening," she continued.

In both cases, officials leaked the news.

"This idea of saving the country from the commander-in-chief, protecting national security interests from a president who is believed to pose a threat to them, that gets talked about as if it’s still an abstract or a future risk question. Turns out we are living in that era right now," she concluded.

"That is not supposed to be the way it goes," Maddow noted.

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