Rachel Maddow Quotes

Donald Trump, for years, had been working with the Russians. He brought people on his campaign who had ties to the Russians.

I think there was certainly contact between the Trump campaign and Russians, which is perfectly normal. All campaigns in the modern age have contact with representatives of foreign governments.

We've got [evidence] of direct Russian government connections with the [Donald] Trump campaign, during the campaign, while the Russian government was interfering in our election to try to elect Trump.

We do have evidence the [Donald] Trump campaign was working to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue.

This [British] dossier is still considered to be mostly uncorroborated but it's overall allegation is that the Trump folks knew, the [Donald] Trump folks knew about the Russian campaign to interfere in our election, they supported it, they cooperated with it, and in exchange, they made promises to the Russians.

America should really wonder about a President Trump, who had a campaign manager with ties to Putin, pro-putin elements in the Ukraine who had to be fired for that reason. They should wonder when Donald Trump is sitting down with Vladimir Putin, is it going to be America's bottom line, or is it going to be Donald Trump's bottom line he's going to be worried about with all of his business dealings. This would be solved if Donald Trump would release his tax returns as he's told the American public that he would do.

I think you see a clear pattern of people in the Trump campaign coordinating with Russians.

Full disclosure: the Russians did not tell Hillary Clinton, 'Don't go to Wisconsin.'

People knew Trump had strange relationships with the Russians even before he was elected. Consequently, there is every reason to investigate whether Donald Trump is a Russian asset.

For months, the [Donald] Trump campaign denied full stop that anybody associated with their campaign had any ties with Russia or any contacts with Russia full stop.

The Russians sought to interfere with the election process - that the cyber hacking that took place by the Russians was part of that campaign, and that they had a clear preference in terms of outcomes.

Russian government was in contact with multiple [Donald] Trump campaign sources while they were doing [attacks]. Russian nemesis in the American government, U.S. State Department, CIA, are not faring well since Donald Trump came to power.

The Russians have to be celebrating with a minimal expenditure of resources and what they have accomplished. Of course, what's unfolded now, here, the leader of the lead of the investigation about potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign has been removed. So the Russians have to consider this as another victory on the scoreboard for them.

I think it's extremely important that the president Donald Trump himself indicate that he too wants to discover the full truth behind what the Russians did to elections 2016.

WikiLeaks is a lot of things. This past year, WikiLeaks was a tool of Russian intelligence and the Russian government and their interference operation against the American presidential election to benefit Donald Trump.

Part of what the [British] dossier says is this, quote, "The operation", meaning the effort to influence our election, "that has been conducted with the full knowledge and support of [Donald] Trump and senior members of his campaign team. In return, in return, the Trump team has agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue."

I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the [Donald] Trump campaign.

The day after the Republican convention ended, there was another political bomb that was dropped on the U.S. presidential election [2016] from Russia. The day after the Republican convention ended, right before the Democratic Convention began we got what U.S. intelligence agencies believed to be the next big Russian incursion into our election. We got the first WikiLeaks dump.

We're conducting an investigation to understand whether there was any coordination between the Russian efforts and anybody associated with the Trump campaign.

I mean Donald Trump is a legitimate president. He won fair and square. He didn't win the election because of Russian interference.

I think it's more than bank records. I think that you can see that visits, you know, to Moscow were made during the campaign by Paul Manafort and others. I think that there was a cooperation in developing strategy about how Russians could ensure that Hillary Clinton was not elected. They need Donald Trump. Trump will be there to support lifting those sanctions. That's what they really want to happen.

There is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign. But I can always speak for myself and the Russians. Zero. I think it divides the country. I think we have a very divided country because of that and many other things.

We know from the company we hired, Kraus Stripe , that there was Russian involvement in this to destabilize not just our institution, the Democratic Party, but our democracy itself.

Russians absolutely not trying to meddle with the election of Donald Trump. I discussed that with the president-elect. Those conversations never happened. I hear people saying it like it's a fact on television. That is just not only inaccurate and false, but it's dangerous and it does undermine our democracy.

The Russians didn't hack the DNC servers. The Russians didn't interfere in the election [2016]. And if you get a Democrat in the know to sit down and honestly tell you off the record, they'll admit it.