Maddow: Russians May Be Controlling Our Government

There are connections between Donald Trump, Nigel Farange, Julian Assange, and ultimately, Vladimir Putin, the out MSNBC journalist posits in her latest salvo against the president.

If Donald Trump’s presidency collapses, it may be due to the work of Rachel Maddow.

Maddow is continuing to highlight evidence of collusion by Trump’s campaign in Russia’s interference with the U.S. election — and signs that the Russian government is pulling the strings of Trump’s presidency.

For several nights, Maddow’s MSNBC show has featured the news coming out on the Russia connection. It’s emerged that Trump campaign was behind the weakening of the Republican Party platform plank on Russian incursions into Ukraine; it’s been alleged that this was payback from Trump for Russia’s cyber-support of him. The latter part is not yet confirmed, but there were many contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Trump’s weakening of the State Department and putting former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, in charge, is likewise suspicious, according to Maddow.

Then Thursday night, she noted that Trump associates seemed to have advance knowledge of all the documents released through WikiLeaks during the campaign, as did Russian state media. Russian hackers are suspected of providing the information to WikiLeaks. And the president may have known what was coming in this week’s WikiLeaks dump of documents that purport to reveal much about the CIA’s computerized espionage methods and therefore could undermine such efforts. The CIA has not confirmed the authenticity of the documents.

British politician Nigel Farage, who supported the U.K.’s exit from the European Union and has long been a Trump ally, had dinner with the president two weeks ago, Maddow pointed out. Farage also has close ties to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and was at WikiLeaks headquarters in London this week for a press conference on the latest revelations. WikiLeaks says a U.S. government contractor provided the documents, but some former intelligence officials say it’s unlikely so much information would be available to one person.

“The alternative hypothesis is that the Russians have done it again to confuse the story in the U.S.,” cybersecurity expert James Lewis told NBC News this week. “I find that at least as persuasive as the one WikiLeaks is peddling.”

And that possibility is what has Maddow concerned, along with the Trump administration’s coziness with people like Farage.

“The Russian government attacked our election,” she said Thursday. “The Russian government was in contact with multiple campaign sources while they were doing it. Russian nemeses in the American government, U.S. State Department, the CIA, are not fairing well since Donald Trump came to power. Is the operation that Russia started during the campaign — is it over? Or are they still running it? Are we still in this now?

Watch Maddow’s full segment below.