GOP Becomes Party Of The Insurrection With Censure Of Cheney And Kinzinger

um wow on all of it wherever you want to start well first the resolution uh from the rnc on on kinsinger and cheney is an extraordinary document from start to finish uh nicole at the very beginning it starts with a preamble that says whereas the primary mission of the republican party is to rep is to elect republicans who support the united states constitution so that's their starting point and then they end by saying it is kinzinger and cheney who should be censored because their behavior which has been destructive to the institution of the u.s house of representatives the republican party and our republic so their behavior by helping to take the lead to investigate an attack on the united states congress makes them destructive to the institution of the u.s house of representatives it's an extraordinary a document and the juxtaposition with mike pence coming out and for the first time uh uttering the words at least the first time i've ever heard uttering the words donald trump is wrong just finally coming out and saying it uh donald trump is wrong from the loyal vice president the most loyal person to donald trump in that entire administration until the day of january 6th is is it's it's a it's an extraordinary moment in all of this and nicole as you know when i interviewed donald trump just two months after he left the white house and he said to me when i asked him you know if he was concerned about mike pence and what about those that were chanting on january 6th hang mike pence and he said to me the exact quote they i said their their chanting hang mike pence and his next words are it's common sense john now that interview was last year was in my book was out months ago and we haven't heard any condemnation of any significance from anybody in the leadership of the republican party to those words from donald trump and yet we have this condemnation here of kinsinger and cheney today extraordinary john i mean to take me inside what your reporting suggests is sort of torquing up the volume at a trump world i mean i know that the members have been identified that are of interest to liz cheney i think liz cheney seems to have known exactly who was talking to donald trump that day jim jordan and and kevin mccarthy has a phone call as cheney's been interested in since before the 1-6 committee was formed you've also got the the specter of very senior advisers to the vice president we don't know what they said but we know they were in the room and there there's no suggestion from anyone on the committee i talked to one of them yesterday and i'm sure you have as well that they have been stone walling so is this sort of where the rubber was going to beat the road for pence yeah and you know so we you have seen mark short who was his chief of staff pence's chief of staff testify and also a great jacob who was his counselor in in the vice president's office so really his two most important uh advisors as vice president come forward and by all accounts uh cooperating uh they're that we're told they're not talking about conversations that either one of them had directly with donald trump that would fall under uh executive privilege or arguably would fall under executive privilege but no indication that they're holding back on anything else i think that you know one you know one big question hanging out hanging over all of this is does pence himself uh end up cooperating with this committee i i actually doubt it i i don't think it's going to come to the point where we actually see pence himself testifying and maybe after you've seen the words that he said today maybe they don't need uh his his testimony i mean it's clear what his position is and it's clear the pressure that he was under uh by donald trump yeah i mean that idea that at some point all the questions have been answered either from a podium stage or from the testimony of the 475 witnesses is is something that'll perhaps be clearer at the time when it's known what what pens will do steve i want to bring you in um i can see the dogs in the background if they'll let us borrow you for a couple minutes i want to bring you in on this this it's not a split screen it's one screen it's the republican party and and it's it's what john's saying the language of the uh censure of cheney and kenzinger is so noteworthy it's where we started today because again it's all in writing we are the party of the insurrection we are the party of the lie about the insurrection and it's not a lie being told by the left it's not a lie being told by the media ted cruz called it a domestic terror attack so to talk about the rewriting of history well it's um this is a moment of another moment i should say of of revelation of of the republican party as an institution through its elected leaders revealing what it's become and what it has become is an autocratic vehicle to advance an autocratic agenda that is controlled by donald trump in this country and and there's a couple of remarkable aspects to it first off is it fair to call this stalinesque in its rhetoric certainly it is is it gaslighting on an epic scale surely it is um is it a denunciation of the truth uh definitely uh is it aimed to be a warning that disobedience that dissent in this movement uh this project for the purposes of taking political power in america including at the cost of ending the american experiment there there is to be no disobedience within that within that movement and that's a that's a message and a warning uh to any other dissenters out there and so what we see is a blossoming of this movement the revealing of it in full they keep telling us who they are and this is all part of a moving ongoing event this is very deeply linked to newt gingrich coming out and saying that political opponents should be locked up and i just would say this academically what's the further journey from the end of the obama administration until that moment where you start talking about locking up political opponents or from locking up political opponents to an executioner's wall what's the further journey and so when we look at all of this in its totality it's staring at it staring us in the face we have an autocratic movement that is headed by a former president of the united states that has completely consumed one of the two political parties that has abandoned any pretext of fidelity to the american experiment that both political parties are supposed to be in the business of perpetuating in the work of making the union stronger fairer better for our progeny so truly an appalling moment in american life and the life of the modern republican party but again but again another reveal including uh the reference to the democrat party which of course is the democratic party in the united states of america annie a couple of republicans um you know elected republicans defending cheney kinzinger today there's a tweet out from bill cast senator bill cassidy of course voted to convict donald trump there's another tweet from mitt romney but no one has rushed to the microphones to say anything close to what steve schmidt just said we wanted to sort of come up with maybe an alternate theory of why they're so mad at liz cheney here's some of her most stinging rebukes of donald trump what we already know does constitute the the gravest violation of his oath of office by any president in the history of the country a former president who provoked a violent attack on this capital in an effort to steal the election has resumed his aggressive effort to convince americans that the election was stolen from him this is a man who has demonstrated that he is at war with the rule of law he's demonstrated that he's willing to blow through every guardrail of democracy any man who would watch television as police officers were being beaten as as his supporters were invading the capital of the united states is clearly unfit for future office uh clearly can never be anywhere near the oval office so annie any man who would watch television as police officers are being beaten there's only one man that we know of through great journalism and everything we've understood and and that is what is being described by the the most senior official the rnc uh ronna mcdonald mcdaniel this way liz cheney and adam kinzinger crossed a line they chose to join nancy pelosi in a democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the capitol that is why republican national committee members and myself overwhelmingly support this resolution what is the the sort of double speak about i mean they're they're mad that liz cheney is telling the truth about donald trump and the problem they have is that the truth happened on live tv right i mean the thing here is from a political standpoint no one in the republican party would want to be doing this or making this statement you can see kevin mccarthy has tried as much as possible to keep his members not being the headline not what we're talking about here on television they want to keep the focus on the democrats on inflation on the economy senate leadership has tried to make it about biden but this statement is just the proof that this party is you know that this is written for the old audience of one this is written for donald trump this is written because all those clips you just played um you know he's very angry at liz cheney because she was said in no uncertain terms that he was what he did what what his role was and that he's not fit to serve in office and and this is not politically helpful to any republicans i've spoken to and and ronald mcdonald herself pro is doing this for the old audience of one that's the only person that helps and this is just proof that the party is his as much as mcconnell and other republicans might want to be forward-looking and ignore him and pretend he's not there because he's not on twitter and he's not in the oval office he's very much there [Music] you

Channel: MSNBC

Views: 427,078

Keywords: Nicolle Wallace

Id: Ffr-RA_Rx7o

Length: 11min 23sec (683 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 04 2022