MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said warnings from legal experts that Donald Trump may be acting illegally already amount to a “red alarm screaming in the night.”
On Wednesday evening, the liberal host highlighted instances where media outlets have begun “raising a teeny tiny flag or two that everything they’re doing appears to be quite illegal,” referencing the executive actions taken by Trump and the work of his “first buddy” Elon Musk at the Department of Government Efficiency.
In her opening monologue, Maddow referred to the protests across the U.S. that have already sprung up in opposition to Trump’s immigration policies, restrictions on trans rights, and what demonstrators called Musk’s “hostile takeover” of federal payment systems.
ADVERTISEMENT
Maddow also quoted David Super, an administrative law professor at Georgetown Law School, who spoke to the Washington Post for a piece that ran with the headline: “U.S. government officials privately warn Musk’s blitz appears illegal.”
“So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once,” Super told the Post.
“That’s not a private warning that there might be some illegality coming down the road,” Maddow said, after reading Super’s words on air. “That’s a red alarm. That is a red alarm screaming in the night. Everything they’re doing is illegal.”
She added: “They’re not even warnings, they’re just descriptions of what’s happening.”
Maddow also addressed the role Democratic lawmakers have in responding to the Trump administration’s activities.
“One way to react to that is for the opposition to start shutting down everything they can to try to stop it,” she said. “That has been the message to elected Democrats from many of their constituents this week. Now, tonight, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, says that he does want all Democrats to now start doing everything they can to block all Trump nominees.”
On Tuesday, Schumer joined other Democratic lawmakers outside the Treasury Department at a protest against Musk’s DOGE actions, where he was recorded shouting: “We will win!”
