Veteran MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow had to pick her jaw up off the floor after a reporter with Russian News Agency TASS was able to attend a high-profile White House sit-down between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Describing the revelations as “truly bizarre” on Friday’s broadcast of The Rachel Maddow Show, Maddow seemed even more astonished that the White House could not explain how the journalist had gotten into the meeting.
“[They] have no idea how he got in there,” she said, underlining her disbelief that Kremlin-controlled media was able to live-stream “the President and Vice-President of the United States screaming at Ukraine’s president and berating him with Russian talking points.”
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Both Reuters and the Associated Press, Maddow noted, had been barred from the event.
Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s verbal attack on Zelensky on Friday has sent shockwaves throughout the global political establishment, with Western leaders scrabbling to express their continued support for Ukraine as Russian talking heads revel in the exchange.
“It’s not just radical in that it is a 180-degree directional change; it is also radical in the sense that it is really, radically unpopular with the American people,” Maddow went on, citing recent surveys that suggest more than 80 percent of voters Russian President believe Vladimir Putin cannot be trusted.
