Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Deadline,” former FBI official and MSNBC national security contributor Frank Figliuzzi accused President Donald Trump of “exploiting” the coronavirus pandemic.
He claimed Trump was working “to dismantle the rule of law and the Constitution.”
When asked about Trump removing the inspector general who was to oversee stimulus spending, Figliuzzi said, “Here we have a president who is exploiting a national crisis to move forward his own agenda, his own revenge, his own profit. It’s the very concept of what an inspector general stands for, Nicolle, that is anathema, it’s diametrically opposed to everything that this president stands for. What do I mean by that? IG’s stand for unvarnished truth, reporting the facts, crunching the numbers, the rule of law and compliance. That’s what they do for a living, and it just rubs Trump the wrong way that someone is going to get the truth out.”
He continued, “He doesn’t want to hear the truth. Not only do we have to fight this virus to save these lives, we have to fight it, we got to save this democracy. This president is exploiting a virus to dismantle the rule of law and the Constitution.”
He added, “He sees the truth as an adversary. Those who represent the truth and advocate for rule of law and compliance are simply not compatible with his administration. So he found a way to start doing it. I predict, I hope I’m wrong, but we might even see pardons come next. As the death toll mounts in a national healthcare crisis, we are seeing him slip in anything that advances his agenda. If he thinks the American people are not going to remember this, if he thinks that the military sailors on that ship with Captain Crozier are going to forget that their captain was removed for fighting for them, if he thinks the healthcare workers are going to forget that they don’t have PPE that they are put their lives on the line every day, if he thinks people are going to forget that they have to endanger their lives to go vote in a primary in Wisconsin, right, death or democracy, he’s sadly mistaken. I think this is going to be a strategic error on his part.”
Figliuzzi concluded, “I hate to draw the analogy between bracing this week for perhaps the deadliest time in American history, but I also think sadly we should be bracing for the person in the White House to exploit this time. You know back in my FBI days, Nicolle, some of the most heinous criminals that I saw were those who exploited crises, humanitarian crisis — 9/11, Hurricane Katrine — for their own benefit. I thought that was the most despicable thing that I had seen, and I have to tell you, I see the president’s conduct as akin to that kind of inhumane exploitation of a crisis.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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