"Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, fellow Americans: Vice-President Elizabeth Warren will be delivering the Inaugural Address here today, because President Hillary Clinton has been, uh, unavoidably detained . . ."
On MSNBC's coverage of the South Carolina primary this evening, Chuck Todd actually said that if Hillary Clinton is charged with a misdemeanor concerning her emails, it will have "no impact" on her presidential prospects.
We'll grant Todd this: being charged and potentially convicted of a crime going to the heart of national security might have "no impact" on the support for Hillary and opposition to her Republican opponent on the part of many in the MSM.
But Constitution at Art. II Sec. 4 speaks of "high crimes and misdemeanors." Could we witness the spectacle of someone being simultaneously inaugurated and impeached on the same day?
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Chuck, for those watching at home, seeing this plot line, just to mirror the conversation that happens in a lot of homes, people then say, what about this e-mails thing? That's the thing we don't know about, how do you answer that question?
CHUCK TODD: Well, the way I answer it is, she's got -- I said this on Twitter and all of her fans got upset when I mentioned this, but basically, look, if she has a night on Tuesday the way she's having tonight, she's going to -- we're going to be close to saying game, set and match for her. But she has one thing that's out of her control, an FBI investigation. And it is the one hurdle this year that is out of her control. You talk to her campaign and they will tell you, it's the one thing they can't control. They can't control how this gets -- how this gets leaked out. They can't control when or if the FBI will make a decision about whether they want to bring charges or not and what Justice is going to do. It's the one part of this that's not in their control. And obviously, if it goes really badly, that has an impact. If it's a slap on the wrist, misdemeanor or nothing, it has no impact.
