Rachel Maddow said President Donald Trump could “effectively declare war on the United States” by ignoring the courts’ decision on a freeze on foreign aid.
The MSNBC host starkly warned that Trump could cause a full blown constitutional crisis and “effectively end the republic” on her show Thursday night. The warning comes as Trump tries to sidestep U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s order to unfreeze funding for USAID, the foreign aid organization established by President John F. Kennedy in 1961.
The Trump administration had requested late Wednesday to pause a 11:59 p.m. deadline set by Ali to restart nearly $2 billion in payments to foreign organizations through USAID. The Supreme Court granted Trump’s request, allowing for a full Supreme Court review, a win for the White House.
“They have been joking about this and making, you know, macho-sounding bluffs about this for a long time now, particularly from the vice president, JD Vance,” Maddow said Thursday. “How is the Supreme Court going to deal with it now that it’s real?”
Maddow called it a “very scary issue” and suggested the Supreme Court might softball the president to appease him.
“Do they try to give him what he wants from the courts so that Trump doesn’t break that glass? Doesn’t, you know, smash through the brightest bright line that we have and effectively end the republic?” she asked.
“Do they appease him because they—‘Oh, he’s so scary, we better not make him defy a court order—we better make sure all court orders go his way.’”
She urged the legal system “to make clear to him that his powers as president actually don’t allow him to defy the court.”
And if the courts bow to Trump’s requests, they are effectively rolling over and letting him spurn the Constitution, she said.
“Do they tell him that if he does try to defy the courts, he is effectively declaring war on the United States of America? We’ll see,” she added starkly.
Maddow then told her viewers to keep their “eyes wide open on that and take it with all the seriousness it deserves.”
The aid organizations challenging the Trump administration’s funding freeze have a deadline of noon Friday to respond to Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision to scrap Judge Ali’s Wednesday deadline.
