‘The Dark Days Are Here,’ Maddow Warns Amid Trump’s Purge of ‘Disloyal’ White House Figures

Rachel Maddow raised alarm about the current state of affairs at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue amid President Donald Trump’s administration-wide purge of anyone he deems not sufficiently loyal following new revelations from the intelligence community about foreign interference in the upcoming presidential election.

“It’s not enough that you can’t ever criticize the president or notice that he’s done something wrong in the course of your duties,” Maddow said Friday. “You can’t even fall under suspicion of seeming like the kind of person who might criticize the president. That’s enough to get you fired even if you didn’t actually criticize him.”

President Trump forced out acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire after lawmakers were briefed that Russia is helping Trump win reelection. Maguire’s appointed replacement is staunch Trump defender Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany.

Maguire “was just fired because U.S. intelligence have found that [evidence] and because someone in his office warned Congress,” Maddow put it bluntly, noting that the president didn’t appear angry over the election meddling itself but that Congress was told about it.

“These are very dark turns the country has taken very quickly,” she continued. “The thing we can do at this point is stop talking about ‘concerns,’ ‘worries,’ ‘a potential chilling effect,’ the ‘appearance of impropriety’, the ‘appearance of conflict of interest,’ ‘the appearance of improper political influence,’ ‘concerns,’ ‘distress,’ ‘worries,’ right?”

“This is not a warning. The dark days are not coming. The dark days are here,” Maddow said. “These guys are not sneaking around trying to get away with stuff, and the heroism is catching them and telling people what they’re doing. They are proclaiming openly that the rules are gone, they will do what they want, the government will be turned against you if you stand against this president. That is not a warning. That is where we are. And so what do we do?”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.