Rachel Maddow Says Trump’s Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act Has Gone From Insane to ‘Surreal’ | Video

Rachel Maddow reacted with frustration and a lot of confusion Monday night to not only the Trump administration‘s weekend invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 but also the administration’s “surreal” handling of the fallout from it.

“This is the proclamation in which Donald Trump invoked a law from the 1700s that says, when we’re at war, the president can immediately deport and jail anyone his administration picks,” Maddow began, showing a screenshot of the Trump-signed invocation. “Within hours of that proclamation, the Trump administration put hundreds of people on planes bound for a prison in El Salvador, and they had no legal process at all.”

After noting that a federal judge has since blocked the Trump administration’s deportation proclamation and lobbed questions at the president and his cabinet about why the invocation was signed in the middle of the night Friday evening or Saturday morning, Maddow then tee’d up a clip. “Watch what Trump said in response. This was super weird,” she teased, just before playing a video of Trump saying that he “didn’t sign” the invocation, despite it having his signature on it.

“You sure, big guy?” Maddow jokingly asked.”Do you not remember signing it? Did you not sign it? Somebody else put your name there?” In response to the White House’s defense that Trump was “obviously” referring to the original Alien Enemies Act, Maddow sarcastically remarked, “Obviously, the President of the United States just thought he was being asked whether he signed a document more than 200 years ago.”

“This proclamation [in] question is ostensibly the legal underpinning for this whole deportation operation,” Maddow continued. “Trump’s denial that he ever signed it is now obviously part of the ongoing legal fight.” The MSNBC anchor cited the ACLU’s recent court filing about the proclamation, in which the organization specifically noted the confusion that has stemmed from Trump’s comments about it.

The Trump administration does not, however, seem interested in waiting for the legality of the president’s invocation to be determined. “The Trump administration just tonight has filed notice that it is invoking the State Secrets Privilege, meaning they are claiming that, for national security reasons, they don’t need to provide the court any information about these deportation flights,” Maddow explained. “Even as we still don’t know who they deported.”

“It is an insane story from the very beginning,” Maddow lamented. “But it’s now approaching surreal.”

You can watch the full segment yourself in the video above.

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