MSNBC’s Chris Hayes tore into Donald Trump on Wednesday, saying he either doesn’t have a fully functioning brain or he was intimidating key witnesses in Robert Mueller’s ongoing special counsel investigation.
Hayes was responding to a bombshell New York Times report, which claims Trump was asking at least two of Mueller’s witnesses what they discussed with investigators.
The same report notes that Trump had urged White House counsel Don McGahn to deny a report that he tried to fire Robert Mueller, but McGahn had to remind the president that he did, indeed, attempt to have Mueller removed from his post.
Hayes was baffled that the president had remembered such a key moment:
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
Chris Hayes Shreds Trump: He’s Either Lost Full Cognitive Abilities Or He Broke The Law #inners #Russia #Trump pic.twitter.com/FTUPpqKlNB
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) March 8, 2018
The MSNBC host said:
My first thought about this was either the president has taken leave of his faculties, he doesn’t remember a very important and monumentally memorable thing, which is when you tell your white house counsel to go fire the special counsel currently investigating you and your campaign for possible criminal infractions. Or it’s almost got kind of a mafia movie thing of like you know, I didn’t tell you to do that, right, right? It’s hard not to interpret that a little bit that way.
While Trump has repeatedly shown that he isn’t mentally sound, it’s hard to believe he couldn’t remember asking his top lawyer to remove the man currently running an investigation into him and his presidential campaign.
What’s more likely in this case is that Trump was pressuring McGahn – a key witness in Mueller’s probe – to publicly and knowingly lie about trying to fire Mueller last summer. This tactic of intimidating witnesses into putting out false statements could only be interpreted as an effort on Trump’s part to obstruct justice and interfere with the investigation.
As Chris Hayes suggested on Wednesday, the president’s brain either isn’t fully functioning, or he is trying to bully Mueller’s witnesses and obstruct the investigation, which is against the law.
Either of those options should lead to one outcome: Donald Trump being removed from office.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
