MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow ripped into President Donald Trump’s cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin – a connection she flagged as “unprecedented” and deeply unpopular with Americans.
Maddow devoted a significant portion of her show’s opening monologue on Tuesday to Trump’s affection for the Russian president, hours after they shared a two-hour phone call. The conversation between Trump and Putin came as the MAGA leader suffered “loss after loss after loss after loss” in court battles nationwide, the MSNBC host noted.
“For all of the other unpopular and failing things about this young presidency, there's one thing about this presidency that is just unprecedented in how radically out of step it is with the American people,” Maddow told viewers. “There's such a difference between what Trump wants and what the American people want on one particular issue that I actually think it is not sustainable in normal, 'small-d’ democratic terms.”
She went on to cite a new NBC News poll that found just 2% of Americans sympathized with Russia over Ukraine, while 3% of those surveyed viewed Putin in positive terms. By contrast, 84% viewed the Russian president negatively and a majority of Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the poll found.
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“So I just want to stick a pin in this because I think this is important now, and it's going to get more important as things get weirder and weirder,” Maddow warned.
The host, a frequent Trump critic, said the poll makes it “very clear” how the American people view Russia.
“This is, it's a statistical oddity,” Maddow proclaimed. “I'm not sure there's ever been anything like this before in presidential politics, but this is part of what the Trump presidency means, and it accounts for some of the weirdest stuff in it.”
Maddow concluded her sound off by mocking Trump for speaking by phone to Putin in the midst of “all the other chaos that he is wreaking in our own government.”
“There's Donald Trump, you know, twirling his hair and spending two hours on the phone with his bestie Vladimir Putin,” she said. “Two hours on the phone, more than two hours on the phone, talking to his friend Vladimir Putin, who has, again, a 3% approval rating with the American people because the American people know who he is.”
She added that “the weirdest stuff that Donald Trump is doing seems to relate to his relationship with, and affinity for, a foreign dictator for whom the American people give approval ratings of 3%.”
