Rachel Maddow on Deportations: It Appears To Be Side Deals with Warlords and Dictators Benefiting Members of the Trump Admin

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
Wallace: “Well, I also think if you go to the most fundamental. Thing that they’re doing, they are moving human beings. Yeah. And I think if you pump the brakes. Right there. What the public thinks it’s for. Is deporting back to. Home countries people who are adjudicated criminals. New York Times, siena’s got like 87% of people that are for that. That’s largely what Obama did. That is not where any of like the. Time and energy. Has been spent. And so all of. The movement of. Human beings to countries. From which. They are. Not for. Crimes that they can’t prove, were. Committed for people. That that they’re there, that it’s not even clear they they presented evidence to anyone. I mean. I just find it all. So surreal. I find the fact that. Everyone seems. It doesn’t feel like a partizan statement to say due process is a thing we’re still for. And I. Like you. Have driven by some of the. Protests on on some of the big weekend protest days and to see people holding up the signs for due process, like made. My. You know, democracy. Worried heart sing. But but. The, the other piece of it is the movement of humans. Like I’m not I’m not. Sure that we should be moving humans anywhere. I’m not. Sure. That any part of our politics ever contemplated anything. Other than deporting. Adjudicated criminals. Back to their home countries.”

MADDOW: “Yes. And it turns out, like all of this weird third country stuff that we’re doing, like, why were we renditioning people during the George w bush era? Right. It’s because we wanted to hold people in terms that couldn’t be justified under U.S. law. And so we made side deals with countries like Poland or djibouti or whatever, to hold people in these places to do terrible things to them that we couldn’t do here. Right. So you know that history very well. That’s your previous life, right? Yeah. But now we’re moving people into these black sites in third countries. What for? What appear to be side deals with oligarchs and warlords and dictators in those countries that in some cases benefit members of the Trump Administration. Right. This Libya thing has all of my hairs standing up on end in terms of what’s going on there. Like, who knows what’s behind the recent news about south sudan, really? Like it’s insane. It’s absolutely insane. But in all of these cases, these black box deals to send people to places where there’s no public policy justification for sending them whatsoever, all gives opportunity for some sort of tribute or personal benefit to happen on the side of these things. For the members of the Trump Administration who are working these things out. And so that story is like, I’m interested in those kinds of stories. I think one of the things that we’ve learned from the Russian opposition and from Navalny’s example, is that no matter what kind of support the strongman or or authoritarian has, nobody is excited about the prospect of him stealing from the people in order to build himself golden palaces with golden toilets. And to the extent that we can, like, stay focused on the self-dealing and the corruption, that is the real explanation behind all of these otherwise inexplicable policies. Yeah, I do think that that erodes their support, even from people who might, you know, enjoy some of the other things they’re doing.”