On Tuesday's All In, MSNBC host Chris Hayes surprisingly informed viewers of a flip-flop by guest Jennifer Rubin as he recalled that the frequent MSNBC guest who has a right-leaning history did, in fact, oppose President Barack Obama's creation of the DACA program before deciding she is now in favor of it with President Donald Trump rescinding it.
Rubin ended up taking a shot at Trump as she laughed about how the President "has been so inhumane" and "haphazard" that "they've got people like me defending" Obama programs like DACA and the Affordable Care Act.
And, if there were any doubt about whether MSNBC still considers Rubin to be a conservative presence on the network in spite of her recent tendency to trash conservatives, Hayes began the segment by introducing her as a "conservative columnist of the Washington Post."
After beginning with his other guest -- former Obama press secretary Josh Ernest -- Hayes went to Rubin and brought up her history of criticizing Obama over DACA:
I feel like there's been something interesting going on with this DACA decision which is -- David Jolly was on the program last week -- where it's almost like the President has called conservatives' bluff, right? So all these conservatives saying like, "We don't like DACA," you know, the Obama administration. You wrote this back in 2012:
The MSNBC host then read:
"In both health care and immigration contexts, Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama are lacking in constitutional awareness or have so politicized the Justice Department it is no longer a reliable indicator of the law."
Hayes then added: "Today, when they basically ended DACA, you were angry. What happened?"
Rubin defended her change of position on the issue:
Well, yes, I am angry because, first of all, there is no pending legislation -- there's no pending need to change it at this moment. People have relied up on it -- there's a due process assumption that we have in this country that, if you follow the law, you play by the rules, you come forward, you identify yourself, the government isn't going to turn around and throw you out again.
A bit later, after Hayes asked if Trump has a tendency to believe he can use something as leverage of negotiations only to discover that it never works, Rubin jabbed Trump as someone who can make Obama programs popular as she responded:
ObamaCare, DACA, they've never been more popular. They've got people like me defending them because this administration has been so inhumane, so haphazard in the way they go about it. You can't treat people like they don't exist. People rely on these things -- they have been told that they can benefit from these things.
She then questioned whether DACA really is unconstitutional as she added:
And, by the way, when we're talking about people who don't know which way is up, I'd like to see the legal opinion from Jeff Sessions that he relied on to say that this is unconstitutional. There happens to be a contrary opinion ...
