MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow addressed the “perception” of President Trump attempting to “distract from a catastrophic domestic scandal” Friday evening, immediately after listening to the commander in chief announce the U.S. had launched a military strike against Syria in response to the chemical attacks carried out against civilians in Syria last weekend.
“It has national security consequences when the president orders missile strikes on Syria on a night like tonight,” Maddow said after Trump’s announcement. “The strategic effect of that strike will be assessed by both our allies and our enemies.”
Maddow said that some countries are weighing their role in Syria and are attempting to determine how they will respond to the U.S.’ actions. The timing of the strike will impact how they respond, she said.
“It will affect those other countries’ view of this strike. It will affect their reaction to it,” Maddow added. “It will therefore affect the utility of this military strike if the president of the United States is believed to have issued the order to launch this strike tonight, even in part because people think he wanted to distract from a catastrophic domestic scandal that is blowing up at home at the same time. The perception that the president may have ordered these strikes in part because of scandal will affect the impact and the effectiveness of these military strikes. Unavoidably.”
Maddow: Trump’s personal turmoil taints U.S. military options and national security pic.twitter.com/1t0OSlAMt5
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) April 14, 2018
Trump made his announcement at the White House.
“A short time ago, I ordered the United States Armed Forces to launch precision strikes on targets associated with the chemical weapons capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. A combined operation with the armed force of France and the United Kingdom is now underway,” Trump said Friday evening in an address from the White House.
This isn’t the first time Trump has launched a military strike against Syria. In response to a chemical weapons attack on civilians in April 2017, Trump ordered a retaliatory missile strike on a Syrian air base.
The “domestic” issues Trump faces, as Maddow put it, relate to a number of developments at home this week, including the FBI raid of the home and office of his personal lawyer Michael Cohen. It was reported earlier Friday that Cohen has been investigated for months in a criminal probe looking at his “personal business dealings.”
Trump also faces the release next week of former FBI Director James Comey’s book, many excerpts of which have already been leaked, in which he discusses his dealings with Trump before he was fired last spring.
Meanwhile, new reports have emerged about special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian investigation, including that Mueller’s team has found evidence that Cohen traveled to Prague in 2016 — affirming an allegation from the infamous “Trump dossier.”
