On Wednesday morning’s episode of Morning Joe, host Mika Brzezinski played separate video clips of Republicans claiming President Obama needs to be impeached. One video clip came from former half-term Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin. Palin posted the video to her Facebook page shortly after having an ‘exclusive’ article published at Breitbart. In both the video and article, Palin claimed the President needs to be removed from office due to the recent crisis revolving around migrant children fleeing violence in Central America and being detained at the border.
The other video clip showed Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst calling Obama a dictator and saying he should face impeachment over his use of executive orders. The video was from a forum held in January but surfaced shortly after Palin’s video and article made news Tuesday. After the clip had made the media rounds Tuesday evening, Ernst tried to distance herself somewhat from the comments.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
Below is video of Mika discussing impeachment, courtesy of MSNBC:
As you can see, Palin’s video really upset Brzezinski. Mika stated in no uncertain terms that this talk of impeachment scares her and it is quite disturbing. While it is understood that Palin is off her rocker, Mika knows that this type of conversation can easily be the spark that gets a roaring fire started. It doesn’t matter if Palin can’t actually point to one specific law the President broke in regards to this particular emergency. All that does matter is she is eliciting an emotional response among far-right conservatives, who will want to push Republicans in Congress to act on their behalf. The look on Mika’s face Wednesday morning said it all. It was a look of complete and utter terror.
Brzezinski did ask others on the panel what they thought. Mark Halperin, master of ‘both sides do it,’ pointed out that President Clinton was impeached, and there were discussions to impeach President George W. Bush towards the end of his time in the White House, so this is all just a symptom of polarization. Mike Barnicle had a slightly different take. He perfectly exclaimed, “Thank you, John McCain, for unleashing that on the United States.”
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
