On Wednesday’s Hardball, MSNBC contributor and PBS NewsHour correspondent Yamiche Alcindor suggested that the President’s reaction to the Mueller report is a sign of how authoritarian regimes come to power and questioned the intelligence of anyone who watched (or, by extension, reads this) that a reelected President Trump in 2020 would cast doubt on whether Americans understand the Constitution.
So, to be clear, a journalist who’s salary is paid for by you, the American taxpayer, has concerns about your intelligence if Trump is reelected in 2020. Add this to the list of reasons to defund PBS.
Alcindor’s comments came at the end of the A-block reacting to the House Judiciary Committee holding Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt of Congress for his refusal to submit requested documents and testify before their committee with Members giving way some of their questioning to staff lawyers.
She fretted that she hasn’t seen any “sort of action from Republicans” and then pivoted to 2020, suggesting that the election will “be resolving a lot of this.”
And how would that be? Well, Alcindor ruled that “[i]f the President can get re-elected while doing all of this, that’s when you really have to ask yourself about the Americans and their understanding of the Constitution because then, it says that there is a precedent set that any Republican and any Democratic president can do this and keep their job.”
Fellow guests Joyce Vance and Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) didn’t object and neither did host Chris Matthews, who replied:
Well people have been — because of all kinds of tribal alliances, I’ve noticed that every community will re-elect the guy who’s one of theirs even if they're crooks and we’ve never apply that to the President of the United States before, and God help us, we hope never will.
So, yes, we once again had a Gruber-like situation where the elites in Washington bemoaned how the rest of the country might disagree with them and thus, in their view, do the opposite of what’s good for them.
Moments earlier, Alcindor had strayed into Notable Quotable territory. After Vance defended her former boss Eric Holder’s actions regarding Fast & Furious that led to him being held in contempt of Congress, Alcindor and Matthews suggested America’s becoming a “tin pot crazy country” a la Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela (click “expand”):
MATTHEWS: And I just think the closer we — everyday is, look, we’re going to a tin pot crazy country where there’s no history of democracy. I don’t want to knock any other country because we’re better. We’ve been doing this since the late 18th century and yet it sounds like we haven’t been doing it or acting now like we haven’t had 250 something years of getting regular election every two years.
(....)
ALCINDOR: [B]ut I should tell you, Chris, I’ve talked to people that are from Venezuela, from Haiti, they say, look at this very carefully. This is how authoritarian governments start. They start by the fact that, first, he was talking about jailing his opponents. Now, he’s talking about the idea that he doesn’t have to answer to Congress. So there are people, mostly Democrats, who are from authoritarian governments who are sounding the alarm saying, America really needs to watch out.
MATTHEWS: Yeah, people that come from, well, Cuba, places like that, you know, Venezuela.
Also in this segment, Vance suggested that just because “Bob Mueller may not have found evidence that was sufficient to prove a conspiracy between campaign and the Russian government,” that doesn’t meant there wasn’t collusion or that the President wasn’t compromised by the Russians.
Is there a prescription out there for those suffering from collusion delusion? Because Vance and her colleagues sure could use it.
To see the relevant transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on May 8, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s Hardball
May 8, 2019
7:03 p.m. EasternJOYCE VANCE: And, you know, to compare this contempt situation with Attorney General Barr to the time when Eric Holder as Attorney General was held in contempt, that ruling came after the Justice Department had turned over something like 7,600 documents and had made multiple witnesses available. So there is this good faith effort to comply with subpoenas. Here, we have a President who has issued a flat out edict to his people. Do not show up. Do not testify. Exert executive privilege over all documents. This is an executive President who wants to remain immune from any scrutiny. That’s not how the Constitution works.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: You know, Yamiche, you and I talk about this off-camera And I just think the closer we — everyday is, look, we’re going to a tin pot crazy country where there’s no history of democracy. I don’t want to knock any other country because we’re better. We’ve been doing this since the late 18th century and yet it sounds like we haven’t been doing it or acting now like we haven’t had 250 something years of getting regular election every two years. The branches of government respect each other, they have little arguments and they’re resolved by the courts and we move on. This President is now saying, I’m going to assert executive privilege over the universe. Anybody I know, anybody who has ever worked for me, any paper that comes out of this federal government and any agency, including Justice Department, I own.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Well, I put the question to Sarah Sanders, the White House Press Secretary, today. I said, what do you make of the fact that people who say President Trump is edging us closer and closer to a constitutional crisis? Her response was Democrats are overreaching and the White House is the one that’s really being bullied by another branch of Congress, another branch of the government rather. Democrats, of course, say that this is really oversight. This is our constitutional duty to do this, but I should tell you, Chris, I’ve talked to people that are from Venezuela, from Haiti, they say, look at this very carefully. This is how authoritarian governments start. They start by the fact that, first, he was talking about jailing his opponents. Now, he’s talking about the idea that he doesn’t have to answer to Congress. So there are people, mostly Democrats, who are from authoritarian governments who are sounding the alarm saying, America really needs to watch out.
MATTHEWS: Yeah, people that come from, well, Cuba, places like that, you know, Venezuela.
(....)
7:11 p.m. Eastern
MATTHEWS: Joyce, there is the question again. This a lot of the stuff in here may not be criminal. Of course, there’s questions about whether there’s anything criminal at all and then the collusion piece of it, the conspiracy. Certainly a lot of questions, 50-50 at best for the President in terms of obstruction at best for him. But now, we do need the counterintelligence information. What were the Russians up to? Who on this side, the American side, were playing ball with them, criminally or not, and they won’t even turn that over for that purpose to the Intelligence Committee of Schiff.
VANCE: The counterintelligence part of this investigation has always been critical, Chris, and this is certainly within Congress’s core area of responsibility. Bob Mueller may not have found evidence that was sufficient to prove a conspiracy between campaign and the Russian government, but that’s a far cry from saying that there was no collusion, a far cry from saying that the President hasn’t perhaps unwittingly been compromised. Congress needs to see what the counterintelligence investigation concluded so it can protect this country from whatever Russia is planning on bringing next.
(....)
7:14 p.m. Eastern
ALCINDOR: I think that the subpoena is already something that is very, very serious and we have not seen this sort of action from Republicans. I will say, if we go a broader picture, 2020 is going to be resolving a lot of this. If the President can get re-elected while doing all of this, that’s when you really have to ask yourself about the Americans and their understanding of the Constitution because then, it says that there is a precedent set that any Republican and any Democratic president can do this and keep their job.
MATTHEWS: Well people have been — because of all kinds of tribal alliances, I’ve noticed that every community will re-elect the guy who’s one of theirs even if they're crooks and we’ve never apply that to the President of the United States before, and God help us, we hope never will.
