Rachel Maddow Questions Whether Trump Indictment Could End In Exchange For Trump Dropping Out of Presidential Race
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow questioned whether the indictment of former President Donald Trump could be dropped in exchange for Trump dropping out of the 2024 presidential race and being banned from running again.
“You have to wonder if the Justice Department is considering whether there is some political solution to this criminal problem,” said Maddow on Thursday’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC, citing the 1973 resignation of former Vice President Spiro Agnew, following news of Trump’s indictment:
Whether part of the issue here is not just that Trump has committed crimes, but that Trump has committed crimes and plans on being back in the White House. Do they consider as part of a potential plea offer, something that would proscribe him… proscribe him from running for office again? I don’t know.
Host Lawrence O’Donnell responded, “I would imagine if anything like that happened that it would have to come from the defense side of the negotiation. That the Trump team would say, ‘Oh, by the way, and with this, we will also, you know, drop out of the race for president.'”
“Otherwise, it would put the Justice Department in this position that Donald Trump claims they’re in,” he noted, pointing out that Trump claims his prosecutors are “simply trying to stop him from becoming president again, and that’s the only reason they’re doing this.”
He continued:
So my guess, given those dynamics and the change in the way the Justice Department sees this in those 50 years since Spiro Agnew, it just seems unlikely that they would reach into the political zone of the solution. Our politics does have to find a solution to this, but it might have to find that solution separate and apart from the criminal process.
Maddow replied, “Yes, I think that’s right, but I mean the closest analog we’ve got to this is that courtroom…that federal courtroom where Spiro Agnew resigned in the hallway, sent his letter of resignation to the Secretary of State.”
“He resigned and then walked into the courtroom, and then the indictment effectively went away when he pleaded no lo and was able to get away without facing 40 felony counts,” she said. “I’m not saying that’s the way this should go for former President Trump; I’m just saying that is the closest allegory that we’ve got in history.”
Maddow’s comments were picked up by the pro-Trump super PAC ‘Make America Great Again Inc,’ which tweeted, “Maddow gives the game away.”
Newsmax host Rob Schmitt also accused Maddow of saying the “quiet part out loud.”
Watch above via MSNBC.
