‘You Did Not Hallucinate That!’ Chris Hayes Stupefied That Trump’s Past Impeachment Argument Contradicts Immunity Claim Now Before Supreme Court
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes got fired up when concluding that Donald Trump’s 2021 argument against impeachment blatantly contradicted his current arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court dealing with presidential immunity.
Hayes said Thursday’s oral arguments “were frankly shocking.”
He continued, “To my mind, one of the most galling things…is that, during Donald Trump’s own impeachment trial for this very matter — his attempts to overturn the election — his own lawyer, before the nation and before the Senate, argued the literal opposite of what his lawyer is now arguing to the Supreme Court.”
Hayes played tape of Trump impeachment attorney Bruce Castor, saying:
There is no such thing as a January exception to impeachment. There is only the text of the Constitution that makes very clear that a former president is subject to criminal sanction after his presidency for any illegal acts he commits.
“You did not hallucinate that!” Hayes exclaimed. “That was Donald Trump’s lawyer in the Senate saying the following: ‘the text of the Constitution that makes very clear that a former president is subject to criminal sanction after his presidency for any illegal acts he commits.’ Hayes continued:
That was the legal argument Trump’s lawyers used in 2021 to help avoid conviction in the Senate: “Don’t worry, you can still vote to acquit him, and we all still know, because it’s obvious, that he could face criminal sanctions.”
Now, his lawyers across the street, in the Supreme Court three years later are making literally the opposite argument to a receptive Supreme Court! As Janelle Bouie put it in The New York Times, “Trump has asked the Supreme Court if he is, in effect, a king, and at least four members of the court, among them the so-called originalists, have said, in essence, that they’ll have to think about it.”
Watch the clip above via MSNBC.
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