Sarah Kendzior and Joy Reid deconstructed the Trump administration and its march toward autocracy Saturday morning.
Transcript:
JOY REID: And yet, Sarah, the impunity with which Donald Trump has been able to do all of this, He's making money off of being president, These meetings we keep talking about, we just keep finding out about more and more and more Russian meetings.
The one with Jared Kushner saying he wanted a secret back channel, secret communications. There seems to be nothing so outrageous that it causes a political reaction. You talk a lot about autocracies. Isn't this the essence of it, that the leader can get away with literally anything?
SARAH KENDZIOR: Yeah. and they're very brazen about it. They're blatant about it on purpose and that's to instill a sense of helplessness in the population. They're basically saying we know that you know what we did and there's nothing you can do. And they've continued to do this in this way.
When Donald Trump Jr. released those emails on twitter, that was a sign that he believes quite possibly they won't face repercussions. And if Trump has consolidated executive power. If he has the ability to issue presidential pardons, and if people like Jeff Sessions who are implicated in the scandal aren't going to actually prosecute people when evidence comes in, then, yeah, they do have, you know, a kind of immunity from consequence.
And that's an absolute tragedy for American democracy. That either party should consider. There's no future for the Republican party in this kind of system. You're looking at a situation in which Republican leaders will be denied the opportunity and the ability to advance their positions and careers because they'll be subservient to Trump and his Kremlin colleagues. That's a terrible situation for this country.
