MSNBC’s Jen Psaki Gets Defiant After Trump Pal’s Shocking Rant on 2028: ‘This Country Is Still A Democracy!’

MSNBC host and former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki waxed defiant over Steve Bannon’s rant about the inevitability of President Donald Trump remaining in power in 2028, declaring “This country is still a democracy!”

Bannon told The Economist’s editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes and deputy editor Ed Carr that “He’s going to get a third term. So Trump ’28, Trump is going to be president in ’28, and people just ought to get accommodated with that,” and added that there’s already a “plan” to ensure that.

On Friday’s edition of MSNBC’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki, the host opened her show with a marathon commentary in which she laid out elements of a plan that she says is already underway, but ended on a hopeful note:

PSAKI: Okay, okay.

In any other political era, this is something I would roll my eyes at. I mean, something I’d say, let’s not spend too much time on it. And I — honestly, I sincerely hope that one day we get back to that world. I think we all do.

But since we are living in this era, in this completely messed up moment in time, I think it’s important that you hear this from one of the architects of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, his former campaign manager and adviser, Steve Bannon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE BANNON, FORMER TRUMP ADVISER: He’s going to get a third term. So, Trump ‘28, Trump is going to be president in ‘28. And people just sort of get accommodated with that.

INTERVIEWER: So, what about the 22nd Amendment?

BANNON: There’s many different alternatives. At the appropriate time we’ll lay out what the plan is. But there’s a plan. And President Trump will be the president in ‘28.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PSAKI: Okay. Let’s start just with all the caveats. I mean, Steve Bannon says things like that to get attention. He relishes the attention. He spends hours on television or kind of on his own streaming service every day. He loves the pot-stirring.

But this isn’t really about Steve Bannon. It’s actually about his former boss, Donald Trump, and how far he is willing to go when his supporters and former advisers and anyone who is in his ear eggs him on like that. I mean, let’s be perfectly clear here as that question during that interview alluded to, the Constitution explicitly bars Donald Trump from serving a third term as president.

But that has not stopped him from openly musing about it, hasn’t stopped him from falsely claiming there are legitimate ways to do it, and it hasn’t stopped him from promoting Trump 2028 merchandise. And not even just to his supporters. I mean, he’s definitely doing it to them.

Remember when Trump 2028 hatched? Just kind of randomly appeared in the Oval Office during his meeting with Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, of all people. I mean, that happened.

And maybe you think all of that is just trolling. Maybe some of it is just Trump trying to get a rise out of his critics. After all, it’s not what he says that matters, right? It’s what he actually does.

But when you look at what Donald Trump is actually doing when it comes to our elections, the prospect of him trying to defy the Constitution to remain in office doesn’t seem so hard to believe. And I’m not just talking about his last failed attempt to illegally stay in power on January 6th. I’m talking about things he is doing and his administration is doing right now.

I mean, today, the Justice Department announced that it plans to send election monitors to about a half dozen counties in California and New Jersey to monitor polling sites during their upcoming elections, happening just 11 days from now. And some of those counties just happen to be where key congressional races will take place a year from now, which is definitely not a coincidence. We should see all of this as a trial run, and I’m going to speak with a top election lawyer who also lives in California, about this later in the show.

But election monitoring is something past administrations have done, usually not an off year elections. But let’s also just put this in a bit of context. Trump’s allies are trying to overturn a key section of the Voting Rights Act. Trump is sending military into the streets of American cities, in part to intimidate people from participating in the Democratic process. They have been pressuring, as we all know, we’ve been covering this a lot. Republican leaders in red states across the country to redo their congressional maps, to steal back seats.

And now, Trump wants to put his hand-picked lackeys in charge of monitoring elections. That’s not to mention that the Trump officials who have been tapped for this election monitoring operation are these two ladies, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Trump’s head of the civil rights division, Harmeet Dhillon, both of whom are election deniers, of course.

…

You can’t really look at a single thing they’re doing and think the goal of that policy is to win popular support. So, when the president’s top allies start encouraging him to ignore the Constitution, to hold on to power, when the president is clearly gearing up to suppress the vote in any way that he can, we kind of have to pay attention.

But this country is still a democracy! Elections do still matter!

It’s going to require clear and decisive victory at the ballot box to prove Americans will not be intimidated by these tactics.

Watch above via MSNBC’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki.

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