From the earliest days of the Trump administration, intelligence officials found themselves walking on eggshells when Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election came up. Donald Trump didn’t want to hear about it, and was furious when it was even mentioned in the Oval Office. An investigative report by the New York Times Magazine’s Robert Draper is peppered with previously unreported details “about the fears of officials in U.S. intelligence agencies under the Trump administration, who described struggling to brief the president without provoking his anger or losing their jobs.” As a result, intelligence reports about Russia’s not-so-secret support for Trump, (and, by extension, about Trump’s strangely cordial relations with Vladimir Putin) were “softened.” Now, with Moscow working to manipulate the 2020 U.S. election, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow sets up Draper’s revelations with a look at how autocrats everywhere use the power of the governments they control to preserve their personal power — and how Trump fits the pattern.