MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports on Monday featured a panel discussion rife with all the most obnoxious kinds of DNC flackery. Mitchell repeated the tired media lie that House Republicans have no evidence against President Joe Biden, then teed up faux Republican Charlie Sykes to amplify faux Republican Liz Cheney’s claim that if Donald Trump was elected, he would seize the White House for a third term.
Mitchell led off the segment with the obligatory claim that House Republicans lacked any “concrete evidence” of malfeasance by President Biden:
House Republicans could vote this week on an impeachment inquiry against president Biden. Even with only a three vote margin, speaker Johnson says he has the votes to kick off an impeachment inquiry. This despite a lack of concrete evidence backing Republican claims that the President benefitted financially from his family’s business dealings overseas.
She passed the spotlight over to former Obama White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who claimed the GOP needed the impeachment inquiry to dig up evidence which would justify the inquiry’s own existence:
Here you have a Congress that’s obsessed not just with an impeachment inquiry, but the needs to create an impeachment inquiry to find evidence to justify an impeachment inquiry. So I think that the White House is in a good place fighting the process of this and using that process as the message, in a serious world with many problems, that this is a group that is simply not focused on the needs of the American people.
Mitchell then brought up the Sunday interview of Liz Cheney by Today show host Savannah Guthrie. She played a clip of Cheney insisting that Trump, if elected, “absolutely” would try to stay in office “beyond a second term.”
Ostensible Republican Charlie Sykes vociferously agreed with Cheney’s assessment: “she is absolutely right about all of this.” He added cryptically, “a Trump 2.0 presidency would have very, very few constraints, either constitutionally or politically.”
Sykes didn’t expand on that point — probably because he couldn’t. Of course, Donald Trump is not imbued with some unique immunity to constitutional checks and balances, as we saw numerous times throughout his presidency. Instead, he continued praising Cheney for her alarmism:
What Liz Cheney is doing now is raising the stakes for fellow Republicans: understanding exactly what it is you are doing. One after another, they’re falling in line behind Donald Trump. And Liz Cheney is out there saying, do you understand what that means? What you are buying in for? But she’s completely right. Anyone who thinks that a Republican House or a Republican Senate would serve as any sort of a brake or a guardrail on the excesses of a Trump Presidency, I think, is beyond naive at this point.
It’s oddly comforting to know that even during news cycle where the war in Israel is getting the lion’s share of the coverage, Andrea Mitchell can still find the time to air a segment-long campaign ad for the Democratic Party.
For a full transcript of the segment, click "expand" below:
MSNBC’S Andrea Mitchell Reports
ANDREA MITCHELL: House Republicans could vote this week on an impeachment inquiry against president Biden. Even with only a three vote margin, speaker Johnson says he has the votes to kick off an impeachment inquiry. This despite a lack of concrete evidence backing Republican claims that the President benefited financially from his family’s business dealings overseas.
12/04/2023
12:20 - 12:25 p.m. Eastern
[begin v/t]
HOUSE SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: It’s become a necessary step. Elise and I both served on the impeachment defense team of Donald Trump twice when the Democrats used it for brazen, partisan political purposes. We decried that use of it. This is different. Remember, we are the rule of law team. We have to do it very methodically.
[end v/t]
MITCHELL: A spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office calling the impeachment inquiry a baseless, politically motivated attempt to smear President Biden with lies. Adding quote, “This chaotic house GOP is focused on the wrong priorities.” Joining us now is NBC News senior Capitol Hill correspondent Garrett Haake, former Obama White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, and The Bulwark editor at large Charlie Sykes. So Garrett, does the Speaker have the votes?
GARRETT HAAKE: Well it sounds like we’re going to find out pretty soon, Andrea. So far, the only sort of vocal no vote has been Colorado’s Ken buck who’s made it pretty clear he doesn’t think Republicans have found the goods here. But impeachment, or the idea of impeachment of Joe Biden has been one of the few things that’s tended to unite this conference which has been so unruly over the last year.And I think the Speaker thinks he needs to both have this vote to add some muscle to an inquiry that has totally failed to get off the ground outside of conservative media thus far, and to give his Members something to go home and talk to their voters about. I mean, they really sputtered through the end of this year to pass anything else as part of their legislative agenda. They’ve struggled on spending, they’re going to continue to do that into next year. They seem to think this is the kind of vote, even for the moderates for whom it might be politically risky, they can at least take back to their constituents and say we did something. Now, whether they can schedule that something remains to be seen.We just learned a few minutes ago [from] my colleague Ryan Nobles that James Biden, who the Committee has subpoenaed, the Oversight Committee has subpoenaed as part of this effort, and had hoped to interview this week or next, now that interview has fallen through and it looks like they will continue to negotiate. So the impeachment inquiry, you know, has tried to get off the ground, continues to flap its wings but stutter along.
MITCHELL: Thank you, Garrett. Thanks for starting us off. So Robert Gibbs, Hunter Biden has offered to testify publicly to the House Oversight Committee but Chairman Comer rejected that, saying it would be special treatment. They want a private deposition first. How does this White House fight, how does the White House fight back against this? It’s going to stretch into 2024 clearly.
ROBERT GIBBS: I think the White House has to fight this exactly the way the statement you read at the top of this piece talked through . This is a Congress, particularly a Republican-controlled House, that is focused on the wrong set of priorities. The government is in danger of shutting down. We don’t have a budget. We don’t have money for Ukraine. We haven’t passed money for, to help protect Israel.All of those things, and yet here you have a Congress that’s obsessed not just with an impeachment inquiry, but that needs to create an impeachment inquiry to find evidence to justify an impeachment inquiry. So I think that the White House is in a good place fighting the process of this and using that process as the message, in a serious world with many problems, that this is a group that is simply not focused on the needs of the American people.
MITCHELL: And Charlie Sykes, I also want to get your reaction to some of what Liz Cheney had to say today on the "Today" show with Savannah Guthrie. Her new book is coming out tomorrow. Let me play some of that.
[begin v/t]SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Do you believe if Donald Trump were elected next year that he would try to stay in office beyond a second term? That he would never leave office?
LIZ CHENEY: No question.
GUTHRIE: You think he would try to stay in power forever?
CHENEY: Absolutely. He’s already done it once. He was stopped, thankfully and for the good of the nation and the republic, but he said he will do it again. He’s expressed no remorse for what he did. You cannot count on a House of Representatives led by somebody like Mike Johnson to stop this president. You can’t count on a Senate of Josh hawleys and Mike Lees to stop Donald Trump.
[end v/t]
MITCHELL: So, Charlie Sykes?
SYKES: Yeah, unfortunately she is absolutely right about all of this. And this is something that I think we need to focus on, that a Trump 2.0 presidency would have very, very few constraints, either constitutionally or politically. And Donald Trump has made it clear that, number one, he will never acknowledge actual defeat, there’s no scenario which he’s going to graciously concede losing the 2024 election, he’s already said that he would support spending or terminating elements of the Constitution that would keep him out of office.So you know, what Liz Cheney is doing now is raising the stakes for fellow Republicans: understanding exactly what it is you are doing. One after another, they’re falling in line behind Donald Trump. And Liz Cheney is out there saying, do you understand what that means, what you are buying in for?But she’s completely right. Anyone who thinks that a Republican House or a Republican Senate would serve as any sort of a brake or a guardrail on the excesses of a Trump Presidency, I think, is beyond naive at this point.
