Journalist reveals to Morning Joe that Trump ignored Pentagon officials “pounding on the door” about Russia bounties
President Trump seems to have dedicated the rest of his presidency to proving over and over that there’s really no bottom to his callous depravity and stunning cruelty. According to reporting by the New York Times, the President stood by and did nothing while knowing that the Russians were paying bounties for dead American soldiers, preferring to put American lives at risk than deliver any kind of rebuke to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Washington Post associate editor David Ignatius joined MSNBC host Joe Scarborough to discuss the appalling news and announced to the nation that not only did Trump refuse to take action against the Russians, he did so while actively ignoring a loud chorus of civilian and military officials who were “pounding on the door” to get him to do something about the bounties.
“Based on my reporting trying to confirm the New York Times’ excellent story it’s clear in late March you had senior U.S commanders, senior civilian intelligence officials, in effect pounding on the door of the White House saying we need to do something about this, we need to come to a conclusion about what damage the Russian program is doing, we need to reassess our programs in Afghanistan and they couldn’t get an answer. To this day there’s not an answer, there’s not a real response. Was this because the president was briefed and did nothing or because he wasn’t briefed because people were afraid to give him bad news and kept it to themselves? I don’t know.
But it almost doesn’t matter in terms of the breakdown in terms of the way the government is supposed to work. In some ways, it’s almost worse the department didn’t tell him, ‘Mr. President while you’re encouraging Russia to rejoin the G8, we should mention Russia is putting bounties on the heads of American soldiers.’ If they didn’t tell him that, it’s a stunner,” said Ignatius.
Failing to take action to keep Russia from harming our soldiers overseas should be an impeachable crime in and of itself. It’s hard to see how this couldn’t convince even the most diehard of Trump fans that the President doesn’t actually care about this country and the people in it.
Watch the exchange here:
