Morning Joe Co-Host Argues Trump Is Mounting ‘Essentially an Insanity Defense’ Under the ‘Truly Deluded’ Belief He Won in 2020

MSNBC’s Morning Joe spent some time covering the latest development in the third indictment against former President Donald Trump, the memo by his lawyers outlining the fake elector plot. As Trump supporters continue to claim that Trump thinking he won the 2020 election was protected by free speech, John Heilemann said that was tantamount to “an insanity defense.”

Hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski and guest co-host Heilemann brought in MSNBC legal analyst and host Ari Melber, who explained the significance of the memo in the conspiracy charges with an analogy about a bank robbery. Basically, if Joe and Mike went to a bank that had money that wasn’t theirs and wrote up all the things they would do to get that money, that indicates that there was planning, and now there’s evidence of how detailed that plan was.

Heilemann took this a step further, adding “state of mind” to the equation as if Joe and Mika truly believed the money they were stealing was theirs:

If Joe and Mika are going to the bank and Joe writes something down or has his lawyer write something down, and he says to Mika, “Hey Mika, go to the bank and ask them to give you all the money in the bank, please, because I think all that money is mine. I’m entitled to it. And there’s no question in my mind that that money is mine. Here’s 20 pages of my thoughts on why all the money in the bank is my money.” Which is effectively what Trump’s lawyers are saying. Hey, “Trump believed that that the election was stolen.” It’s effectively an insanity defense. Everyone was telling him, as everyone would tell Joe, “Hey, that money’s not yours,” or “Hey, this election has been lost.” But because Donald Trump was truly deluded about the outcome of the election, he believed it. Therefore, none of these things, none of these legal theories hold water.

Melber explained that “the government doesn’t have the obligation to prove that Donald Trump had the state of mind that he was definitely lying, although they go to great lengths to show that,” and that proves that he had “malicious intent” to enter into the alleged conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.

Watch the video above via MSNBC.