Politics & Government

President Donald Trump has made America less safe by punching a hole in the nation's ability to defend against a certain kind of attack from Iran, MS NOW's Rachel Maddow warned on Monday, and they're already taking advantage.

Maddow opened by mentioning the devastating wildfires in Spokane, Washington, and a surprising way that Trump allowed Iran to sabotage efforts to fight them.

"We're watching those fires and those evacuations tonight after what has been a terrible day in Eastern Washington State," said Maddow. Worse still, "in seven different states today, local water systems now know they have been hacked into, in a mass cyberattack that is being attributed to Iran."

"You may recall that the Trump administration dismantled or radically scaled back cybersecurity capabilities within the federal government, including inexplicably firing the head of Cyber Command in the U.S. military," said Maddow. "Well, now, local water supplies again in seven states have been hacked into by what appears to have been a foreign adversary."

"This is not a drill!" said Maddow. "This is something that is happening right now and in real life."

Trump originally blamed the attack on Minnesota's Democratic governor, Maddow noted, but at this point "it is at least seven states. And so definitely, by definition, it is not Minnesota's fault."

The upshot, Maddow said, is that Trump has a "strange inability to process this kind of information, to even seemingly understand this kind of attack," and there's no way to know whether America "is even capable of mounting a defense and a response to this kind of attack, because of the way Trump deliberately degraded our cyber capabilities."

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