Maddow Savages ‘Profoundly And Really Shamelessly Corrupt’ Trump Over Blocked Bridge: ‘This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things’

MS NOW host Rachel Maddow savaged President Donald Trump as “profoundly shamelessly corrupt” over a bridge that he has blocked from opening, claiming the move is a favor to donors.

The 1-and-a-half-mile-long Gordie Howe International Bridge spans the Detroit River between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, and has been delayed over a variety of issues that include demands by Trump.

On Monday night’s edition of MS NOW’s The Rachel Maddow Show, Maddow connected the delay with donors to a Trump PAC who own a smaller, competing bridge that could lose revenue:

MADDOW: Headline, Donald Trump can’t open the Strait of Hormuz. So instead he’s blocking the Strait of Detroit. That’s a headline from “The Globe and Mail”, the Canadian newspaper, the big, beautiful new bridge that Trump is not allowing us to use is that bridge that crosses the Detroit River. It goes from Michigan, from Detroit, across the Detroit River to Canada, to Windsor, Ontario.

Canada fully financed and paid for this bridge. It is ready to be opened. It will be the biggest U.S. border crossing in Canada. It will be one of the most important routes for trade in the entire world. The single most important one with one of our two most important trading partners, Canada.

But Trump won’t let anybody use it, even though it’s ready. Ready to be driven on.

See, this — this is why we can’t have nice things. When you have a corrupt government, you don’t just have the embarrassment and the, you know, the sort of depravity of the president giving out pardons after people write him checks to get those pardons. You don’t just have the president’s sons and his son in laws, their companies collecting hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions of dollars from foreign governments that then get favorable treatment from the president and his administration.

You don’t just get a trust for the president buying stock in a private company, and then the president hosting an event for that private company at the White House and doing everything he can as president to boost the value of that company in which he holds stock.

While the White House insists that categorically, just because he’s president, he can’t have a conflict of interest. It’s like dividing by zero doesn’t make sense. Sure.

I mean, with a profoundly and really shamelessly corrupt president, you do get all of those things I just described.

But you also get very practical consequences. You get a perfectly good, totally useful bridge that you’re not allowed to use. It was supposed to open Friday. It is not open because Trump says he doesn’t want it open.

When this bridge does open someday, if Trump ever lets it open, you should know that there is a competing bridge a little way down the river, a privately owned, very old, very congested toll bridge that will likely lose some of its traffic because of competition. It will lose some of its traffic to this pretty brand new bridge that has just been built.

The family that operates the competing old bridge, earlier this year made a $1 million donation to Donald Trump’s super PAC. In short order, member of that family then got an in-person meeting with Trump Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The White House and the PAC say that was just a coincidence. No connection at all.

But after the million dollar donation, he gets this meeting. And then the same day of the meeting, Howard Lutnick calls President Donald Trump. In that night, Trump suddenly discovers new, supposedly trade related reasons why he is now against this bridge, even though previously he had been for it.

Watch above via MS NOW’s The Rachel Maddow Show.

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