Ari Melber Plays Brutal Supercut of GOP Leaders Slamming Trump’s ‘Access Hollywood’ Tape to Show His Takeover of the Party

MSNBC host Ari Melber played a supercut this week of Republican leaders reacting to the “Access Hollywood” tape during the 2016 presidential campaign to call out what he sees as hypocrisy in the GOP surrounding Donald Trump’s conduct.

Melber then went on to report about the various elected Republicans who showed up at Trump’s trial in New York City this week, “So the courthouse veep stakes includes people who are saying they want that job. They want to be Pence or, frankly, Cohen. And there’s Republicans like JD Vance and Rick Scott.”

“There’s other ambitious figures, conservative Congressman Byron Donalds, we’ve seen there. Vivek Ramaswamy, I mentioned Speaker Johnson, who is the party leader or perhaps follower in this incarnation of the Republican Party,” Melber continued, adding:

And that’s the photo you see. These individuals feeling like they had to do this, pass this litmus test, or they want to do it because it’s not enough to just defend Trump in public, and it’s not enough to say you believe he is innocent, which of course you’re allowed to say, but they actually had to show up within the criminal trial. And then they weighed in on the legal process with their talking points today.

Melber then showed some statements from Republicans defending Trump at his trial this week and added:

It’s an especially stark departure for Speaker Johnson. You can see him spot-shadowed as he’s nodding along and doing his thing. But the point here isn’t whether outside observers are critical of Johnson. Meaning someone else’s view. Our job is to show you and remind you of the facts we have available. And here is Johnson, as recently as 2015, which was just before Trump had more power. He then before all these other things were exposed, even then, had the view that Trump lacked the character and moral center needed for the White House. I’m afraid he would break more things than he fixes. He’s a hothead by nature, and that’s a dangerous trait to have in a commander-in-chief.

So we know where Johnson was at when he didn’t have to say something opposite for political or other self-interested reasons. The Times reports the Republicans also have told on themselves how Trump has changed the GOP as the criminal trial guest list tells the tale? Again, this is not just normal politics, this is extreme. And you can see the shift with your own eyes. Remember the tape alone and not everything else that’s been alleged and sometimes really documented in this trial. The tape alone back then had Republicans saying that was too much.

Melber then played former House Speaker Paul Ryan, then-Senator John McCain, Mitch McConnell, and Mitt Romney all vehemently condemning Trump for the Access Hollywood tape, in which you can hear the former president saying he likes to grab women by their genitals.

The MSNBC host also took a swipe at Fox News for airing hosts that condemned Trump at the time, but largely offering him favorable coverage today.

“And remember, conservative media was in a panic mode because this obviously was going to allegedly hurt Trump with voters, but many were just reeling and discussing the facts in a way that, well, they don’t really do as often today if it involves Donald Trump back then, even in places that you might have gotten used to getting in trouble, places that have had to pay out for defamation and lies, even in some of those places, people on the right were not yet in the habit of saying the sky is red if it helped Donald Trump, they said what they heard was bad,” Melber argued.

Watch the clip above via MSNBC.

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