Watch Andrew Weissman eviscerate the MAGA attacks on Trump's conviction
Weissman: “The attack on the rule of law is also something you have seen, which is the attack on journalism. This is all of a piece that is undermining our institutions and then flipping the script to say that somehow this is, like, a nation in decline.”
Published
Citation
From May 30, 2024, MSNBC coverage of Trump's trial
NICOLE WALLACE (HOST): First ever former American president to become a convicted felon, talking about terrorists and people from mental institutions coming into our country. Donald Trump using the same exact word that he used to explain his defeat in the 2020 presidential campaign. He called that a, quote, rigged election. He called this a, quote, rigged trial. His beef, Andrew, was that there was no venue change and he had to be tried in a place where, quote, we are at five percent.
So to Rachel's point, he possesses such a perverted understanding of the rule of law that his belief is that if he were in a place where he wasn't, quote, at five percent political support, there would have been a different outcome.
ANDREW WEISSMANN: Well, I think it's a fundamental lack of accepting that people act out of principle, and don't act out of self-interest and that jurors can't be trusted unless they're MAGA Republicans. That is essentially what he's saying is that the jury of my peers has to be people who voted for me.
WALLACE: Yeah.
WEISSMANN: That has been rejected, you know, when I was on the Mueller team. The constant refrain was we don't want to be in DC, which was code for we don't want a Black juror. We want to be, you know, a white venue with Republicans. That was rejected in Watergate. It was rejected in the Mueller investigation. That is not how our criminal justice system works. It is also fundamentally, so dismissive of citizens, of people, who are — and that is the way our system works.
These are not — you can't just say these are judges who did this. These are people from the community who made this choice.
I also think, well, Donald Trump doesn't have the — isn't required to have testified in the courtroom. But when he comes out and says things are rigged and that is now in a political arena, the answer to him in the political arena is, you know what? Then you could have taken the stand and you wanted them to hear your voice.
WALLACE: Correct.
WEISSMANN: Take the freaking stand. You didn't testify in impeachment one, in impeachment two. You could testify in the E. Jean Carroll case. You could have testified here. You could do all of that. So don't tell me about this being a rigged process when you did not — you didn't stand up and refute Michael Cohen. You didn't do any of that.
WALLACE: You don't get worked up about very many things, but this assault, this smear against the rule of law gets to you like nothing else.
WEISSMANN: Well, I spent 21 years in the Justice Department.
WALLACE: You've also seen it before, the attacks on Mueller probe.
WEISSMANN: Absolutely. But just to be clear, it is — the attack on the rule of law is also something you have seen, which is the attack on journalism. This is all of a piece that is undermining our institutions and then flipping the script to say that somehow this is, like, a nation in decline. No one can be happy today, but this is a day of seeing the rule of law. I mean, I think Rachel has it totally right that this is really about our democracy in a shining moment led by a, really eminent, wonderful judge, who was completely dispassionate.
And as we said before the verdict, this was a fair process. So you have to live with it. And that is, I think, bringing our country into the modern era. I mean, there are so many countries, England, France, Italy, Israel, Argentina that have done all of this. And they have done it much better than we have. And you know, we think of ourselves as this first-world country that is a shining beacon on the hill. Today is an example of that.