MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow suggested Monday night how President Donald Trump was with “one genius move” attempting to put the FBI “out of business.”
And it’s all to do with the ongoing partial government shutdown, which Trump triggered in December over his demands for money to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Maddow noted how FBI workers were routinely subjected to financial background checks throughout their careers to determine whether criminals could gain leverage over them.
“Given that reality, one easy peasy way to screw up” the FBI, federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies would be to “start taking away paychecks from all of those people all at once,” she suggested — which is what is happening during the shutdown, the longest in U.S. history.
“With that one genius move, you can break the family finances of basically every single federal law enforcement and national security agent in the country,” Maddow explained, later adding: “In one fell swoop with just this one neat trick, you screw up all of their careers. You can create security clearance problems for all of them, all at once, by putting them all under financial strain.”
In doing so, Maddow also suggested it would make the FBI and other agencies “seem like super risky, demoralizing places to work” and make it harder for them “from here to eternity” to recruit the best talent.
Check out the full clip above.