Maddow connects the dots as Trump boosts Russia while Putin helps Iran target Americans

MS NOW's Rachel Maddow kicked off her weekly show Monday night with a searing criticism of President Donald Trump's handling of the growing war in Iran — even as he claims the war is nearly over.

Trump keeps shifting his argument for why the war is happening, and how long it will last, Maddow noted — and in the meantime, he is lifting sanctions on Russian oil, at precisely the moment Russia is giving Iran the intelligence it needs to take out U.S. facilities around the Middle East.

"On the war-fighting side of things, for Russia, this is great for them. This is a win-win," said Maddow. "And meanwhile, Russia's other industry, oil and gas, is as happy as it's been in a long time because of the huge spike in oil and gas prices all over the world. As Russia's oil and gas competitors in the Persian Gulf all basically get knocked offline, right? If Russia can just sell their oil and gas, if they can be allowed to get their oil and gas to market, well, Russia is going to be rich again, which they desperately need, given how they've spent themselves into oblivion in their endless, pointless Ukraine war."

The upshot, said Maddow, is that "we now simultaneously have the U.S. intelligence reports that Russia is helping Iran target American personnel and military facilities to kill Americans in the Middle East, and the news that Trump is cutting sanctions on Russia to ensure they can sell practically all the oil and gas they want and refill their financial coffers as a country."

"And so what exactly happened today when Trump reportedly called a CBS News reporter and said, the war's pretty much over, and then Trump called a bizarre and incoherent press conference at one of his golf resorts where he said, no, no, no, it's, it's not pretty much over. Where did you hear that? Who told you that fake news?" said Maddow. "In the middle of that swirling dust devil of nonsense, and reversal and double reversal and incoherence and non-sequitur from the President of the United States, what happened in the middle of all that today?"

"Well, according to the Kremlin, in the middle of all that, President Donald Trump called Vladimir Putin and talked to him for an hour," said Maddow. "And we only learned about that phone call because the Kremlin told us about it. The White House didn't announce it. The Kremlin did. Did the White House even know Trump was doing that before the Kremlin told everybody it had happened? Did Trump just call Putin from his flip phone? Was it while he was playing golf? Was it even in the White House calendar that today was the day Trump was supposed to check in with his boss?"

"Gulf War Three continues," said Maddow. "Gulf War One was because Iraq invaded Kuwait ... Gulf War Two was because the George W. Bush administration wanted somewhere else to invade besides Afghanistan, so they made up a fantasy about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction when they didn't. Gulf War Three is now, and Donald Trump started it. But for Gulf War Three, there is still no coherent explanation from the president or the White House as to what exactly this is all for. Not even an obviously pretextual false reason like we had from George W. Bush."

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