Steve Schmidt: The Trump Campaign ‘Colluded. Period. End of Discussion’

Former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt had a blunt summary of the Senate Russia report on Wednesday: the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians in 2016. Schmidt spoke to MSNBC’s Morning Joe and laid out in no uncertain terms what the President’s campaign had done.

“But if you read through those reports, or even just read a summary of that report, you can’t come away with anything other than thinking, the campaign worked with Russia to get Donald Trump elected,” said co-host Willie Geist.

“That’s exactly what the report says, despite Marco Rubio’s protestations that it said the opposite of what it clearly says when you read it,” Schmidt said.

“Look, the campaign was compromised. It colluded with the Russian government, with Russian intelligence services. It was stocked top to bottom with useful idiots. And the Russians are doing the same exact thing in this election cycle, spreading misinformation. The misinformation is routinely repeated by United States senators like Lindsey Graham and Ron Johnson, poisoning the discourse in this country.”

“And it says nothing about Trump’s behavior over these recent years as president of the United States, his fetish for Putin, the insistence that there not be interpreters in the room. It’s incredibly suspicious behavior. But the question about whether there was collusion between the campaign and the Russian government has been settled for a long time,” he said.

“Look, the word collusion has a meaning in the English language, and the actions that the campaign made fit the meaning of that word. They colluded. Period. End of discussion.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.