MS NOW Host Rachel Maddow Laughs in Trump’s Face Over ‘Blurted Out’ Admission to Reporters

MS NOW host Rachel Maddow laughed in President Donald Trump’s face over what she theorized was a “blurted out” potential admission of involvement in a “crazy” scheme that could have ended in a “jailbreak.”

The president spoke to reporters on his way to board Marine One Saturday afternoon to tour The Courses at Andrews, during which he was asked about — and appeared to learn of for the first time — the arrest of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro after a bizarre series of events.

On Monday night’s edition of MS NOW’s The Rachel Maddow Show, the host couldn’t stop laughing as she extrapolated from Trump’s responses that before learning of the arrest, the president had been expecting to meet with the formerly-under-house-arrest Bolsonaro “in the near future”:

RACHEL MADDOW: . And this this kind of sounds crazy, right? I mean, was this really going to happen? He was going to cut off his ankle bracelet.

And in the chaos of this fight, fight, fight demonstration that his son had called for at the last minute in his house, he was going to cut off the ankle bracelet and flee his home and race to the U.S. embassy and take refuge in the U.S. embassy and then somehow have, like the U.S. government spirit him out of the country, fly him to the U.S. so he could escape having to go to prison. And Trump would keep him safe in the United States instead. I mean, the U.S. government’s going to help him do that. It’s crazy, right?

Crazy, definitely way too cinematic and conspiratorial and crazy to believe. Until, oops, Trump kind of blurted out that maybe that’s what was going on.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Do you have any comment about Bolsonaro’s arrest, former Brazilian president?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So I spoke last night to the gentleman you just referred to, and we’re going to be meeting, I believe, in the very near future.

REPORTER: Sir, are you willing — the president is arrested today?

TRUMP: What?

REPORTER: Can you comment about the former Brazilian president being arrested today?

TRUMP: No, I don’t know anything about it.

(CROSSTALK)

REPORTER: Mr. President, are you willing — are you —

TRUMP: Is that what happened?

REPORTER: Yes, sir. Yes.

TRUMP: That’s too bad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: That’s too bad. He was. Oh, he was arrested. That’s Trump, President Trump on Saturday pretty clearly seeming to have no idea that Bolsonaro has been arrested overnight. He says, yeah, I spoke to him last night and we’re going to be meeting, I believe, in the very near future.

Were you planning on going to Brazil, Mr. President? Because this this dude’s on house arrest with an ankle monitor, he can’t leave home. How are you going to be meeting with him in the very near future?

I mean, Bolsonaro, they arrested him like 6:00 a.m. Saturday morning. He was rearrested for the most farfetched thing in the world, right? Trying to remove his ankle monitor. And apparently, they believe, try to flee the country.

And Bolsonaro has come up with a story now that the only reason he took a soldering iron to his ankle monitor is because he said he was hallucinating. He said he was having a nervous breakdown because of a change in his medications recently, and that caused him to have a start hallucinating on Friday night. And that’s what happened.

He was basically tripping. And so that’s what happened. And he can’t be held accountable for his actions.

But now here’s the president of the United States on Saturday confirming that actually on Friday night, Bolsonaro might have been tripping, but he was talking to President Trump at the time, and they were making plans to be together, in Trump’s words, in the very near future.

He was under house arrest and about to start a 27-year prison sentence. How are you going to be together in the very near future? I mean, when Trump said that, he must have meant that Bolsonaro was coming to America, right? He definitely could not have done that without breaking off his ankle monitor and fleeing the country and going on the lam.

And apparently, the president of the United States was like in on the plan?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: So I spoke last night to the gentleman you just referred to, and we’re going to be meeting, I believe, in the very near future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Is that what you thought was going to happen?

I mean, in any other presidency, this is like the end, right? This is a show stopping scandal. A U.S. president who appears to be in on a plan to jailbreak a fugitive former dictator and bring him to America, right? I mean, who knows? Maybe this is all just a big misunderstanding. Maybe it was a different Jair Bolsonaro he was speaking to, I don’t know. But with any other president, everything would screech to a halt until this made sense. Right?

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

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