Rachel Maddow Mocks Trump Over Torrent Of Legal Defeats: ‘Shall I Keep Going?’
The MS NOW host on Monday ran through a lengthy series of recent court cases that didn’t go the president’s way.
MS NOW host Rachel Maddow on Monday mocked President Donald Trump over his recent string of legal defeats, enumerating a series of court rulings against him before asking viewers, “Shall I keep going?” — and then doing just that for several more minutes.
Maddow began with the Trump administration’s efforts to target Democratic-led states by cutting $7.5 billion in clean-energy grants implemented under former administrations, only for a federal judge to deem those cuts “unlawful.”
“The Trump administration decided … that just in blue states, just in states that didn’t vote for Trump, they would cut all of that funding. They’d leave the funding in place in states that voted for Trump, they would cut it in states that didn’t vote for Trump,” Maddow said.
“A federal court today ruled that ruling is illegal and stopped the Trump administration from doing that,” she continued. “That ruling today came after another federal court today stopped Trump from shutting down a big offshore wind farm in Rhode Island and Connecticut.”
Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia reportedly ruled that the suspension of this $6.2 billion wind farm project aiming to power more than 350,000 homes and businesses in both states was in “capricious” violation of federal law.
“So that work on the wind farm will be able to go ahead,” said Maddow. “Both of those rulings today follow last night, yet another federal court blocking Trump, this time from cutting funding to the American Academy of Pediatrics.”
The MS NOW host noted that the academy — the largest group of pediatricians in the U.S. — had recently criticized the “flock of ducks-level insane quackery” being imposed under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“Trump responded by canceling federal grants for the American Academy of Pediatrics,” said Maddow. “A judge has now ruled that that was illegal retaliation. And so Trump is blocked from doing that — that funding has to be reinstated.”
She continued by citing another ruling that didn’t fall in the president’s favor, noting that Judge John Chun of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington has reportedly blocked Trump from cutting off federal election funds to states that didn’t comply with his demands.
“Shall I keep going?” Maddow asked. “I can keep going.”
Keep going she did, noting that a federal court last week blocked Trump from freezing billions of dollars in child care subsidies in Democratic states “as some kind of punishment” for the adults there who decided to vote for somebody else.
“Because, you know, ‘What Would Jesus Do?’” Maddow quipped.
Maddow noted that it isn’t just judges who are opposing Trump, as even five Republican senators recently joined Democrats in backing a War Powers Resolution to block Trump from any further military operations in Venezuela.
“It’s almost like he is losing all the time and everywhere now,” said Maddow.
She added that this resolution closely followed 17 House Republicans breaking with Trump over his “big, beautiful” bill to pass a three-year extension of expanded Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies that had lapsed at the beginning of the year.
“I mean, what we’ve just seen in Congress is one of the worst rebukes Trump has had from congressional Republicans since he has been back in office this whole disastrous year,” said Maddow. “And I gotta tell you, this didn’t get as much attention as it should.”