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MSNBC Cuts to Commercial Break As Trump's Counsel Asked What Framers Would Think of a Partisan Impeachment

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  January 30, 2020 8:15 AM

MSNBC cut to a commercial break as soon as President Trump’s legal defense team took the microphone to answer a question about how the Framers would view partisan impeachment.

Reading a question from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and some of his colleagues, Chief Justice John Roberts said: “How would the Framers view removing a president without an overwhelming consensus of the American people and on the basis of articles of impeachment supported by one political party and opposed by the other?”

The network apparently didn’t want its viewers to hear how White House defense attorney Alan Dershowitz would answer that one.

Dershowitz went on to say Alexander Hamilton directly addressed this concern and he believed the Framers would be “appalled” by how the impeachment of President Trump has been carried out.

“Alexander Hamilton] said the greatest danger of impeachment is if it turns on the votes of one party being greater than the voters of the other party in either house. So I think they would be appalled to see an impeachment going forward in violation of the Schumer rule and the rules of other congressmen that were good enough for us during the Clinton impeachment but seem to have changed dramatically in the current situation,” said Dershowitz, a liberal Democrat.

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He then argued that the House of Representatives has acted as if it is above the law.

“The criteria that have been set out are so lawless they basically paraphrase Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) who said ‘there is no law – anything the House wants to do to impeach is impeachable.’ That’s what’s happened today. That places the House of Representatives above the law,” Dershowitz said. “The House of Representatives is not above the law…to use that criteria that it’s whatever the House says it is, whatever the Senate says it is, turns those bodies into lawless bodies in violation of the intent of the Framers.”