Chris Hayes Goes Off on GOP Defenses of Trump Ahead of Trial: ‘Hiding Behind Process Arguments Is Pure Cowardice’

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes opened his show Monday night previewing the Trump impeachment trial and calling Republicans cowards for “hiding behind process arguments.”

Many Republicans have railed against the trial process itself and said it’s unconstitutional to have a trial for a former president in the first place.

As Hayes reviewed Trump’s actions from 2016 to just last month, he said the former president has clearly tried to “cheat at democracy” and that he “does not believe in free and fair elections,” bringing up, among other things, the first Trump impeachment trial over Ukraine.

Hayes recalled how just last year Republicans argued against the impeachment saying the voters should decide. He played a clip of Adam Schiff arguing then that Trump would “continue to try to cheat” in the election before not up how the voters decided, and then Trump “seditiously plot[ted] to overturn” the will of the people.

And after the riot, Hayes continued, the argument against impeachment and conviction was “it’s too late now, his term’s almost over.”

“This man does not believe in democracy and increasingly the party that follows him does not either. Trump is opposed to them,” he concluded. “He takes actions in opposition to them. He is a walking, talking, no-longer-tweeting existential threat to the republic. Hiding behind process arguments is pure cowardice and abdication of duty. If Republicans want to defend the president’s conduct — and by all means try to defend it — but they won’t, and they largely can’t. Because it’s indefensible and it has been all along.”

You can watch above, via MSNBC.