MSNBC on Tuesday kicked off impeachment with a movie trailer-style hype video and a Chris Matthews rant about dumb voters. Matthews attempted to compliment the legal strategy of Alan Dershowitz, who is arguing that no crime should equal no conviction. The Hardball host bashed the dummies he fears will find the strategy effective.
Matthews spewed, “To the non-attentive voter — I think Trump always loves the low information guy, the Dancing with the Stars who cares more about Harry and Meghan or about Brad and Jennifer. And there are a lot more people, by the way, watch the other channels — They care about those topics. It works!”
Contrasting Dershowitz to other Trump defenders, Matthews mocked, “He is not like those frat boys that were... defending the President during the House hearings and not like Mark Meadows.”
MSNBC kicked off impeachment in the 9 AM hour with a movie-style trailer. As images of Presidents Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump appeared, dramatic music played next to a LOT of red filter graphics.
The way the liberal media is melting down, it’s likely to be a long, long trial.
A transcript of Matthews is below. Click "expand" to read more.
MSNBC Senate Impeachment Trial
1/21/2020CHRIS MATTHEWS: I thought you really were there for the opening shot from the defense. From the president's team. Alan Dershowitz does not represent the Republican party. He represents academia. Maybe the best known lawyer in the country. He represents Harvard, The east coast establishment. He is not like those frat boys that were going, defending the president during the House hearings and not like Mark Meadows and those guys and Gates. He's not one of them. He doesn't like one of them. He's academia. He's Harvard. He's the guy that got Claus Von Bulow off. He’s reversal of fortune. He was on the O.J. dream team. When he said there's no crime there, no impeachable offense, that changed the nature of the whole game here. It's not about process. The story all weekend the transition game was won by the defense. Because the whole topic became can you impeach a President who hasn't committed a crime and to the right wing, to the Trumpites that's a good talking point. To the non-attentive voter — I think Trump always loves the low information guy, the Dancing with the Stars who cares more about Harry and Meghan or about Brad and Jennifer. And there are a lot more people, by the way, watch the other channels — They care about those topics. It works!
No crime, no harm. And I think that by Dershowitz he had the little Skype operation he was doing in his bedroom somewhere, you know, and then over the weekend everyone put him on. The White House makes that their defense. No crime, no impeachable offense and they won the transition game, as we say in basketball. They won the transition game and now these guys — and by the way, everything that Adam Schiff says there is right. Everything is defensible. It's a good courtroom argument to the very attentive jury. But he’s not going to get a very attentive jury. He’s going to get a partisan jury. I think the issue of crime and no crime has dominated the headlines over the weekend in the major papers because Dershowitz came on your program and then everyone else wanted him. If this was a strategic platooning where they got the mostly southern frat boy type Republicans off the television for a while to put him on to put him on. I know they're bringing him back, but there's a good platooning going on here. Over the weekend, the whole story was no crime, and therefore the guy should be let off.
