WATCH: MSNBC’s Joy Reid and Medhi Hasan Battle Jack Kingston in a Totally Off the Rails Impeachment Debate
MSNBC’s Joy Reid’s conversation on with Mehdi Hasan and Jack Kingston became an extensive trainwreck on Sunday when the three of them fought over the GOP’s talking points about President Donald Trump’s impeachment.
The heated discussion began when Reid asked Kingston, a former spokesperson for the Trump campaign, why the country shouldn’t get to hear witnesses at the president’s impeachment trial in order to re-establish the facts of the charges against him. Kingston answered the country had that opportunity when the House conducted its impeachment hearings — but then he pivoted, claiming that the Democratic senators running for president in 2020 were “not even showing up to work.”
“They were sitting and listening to the entire hearing,” Reid responded. She reprimanded Kingston, saying,”don’t mislead the audience” on why the Democratic senators have gone back to campaigning after Republicans closed up shop for the trial’s current phase.
After Kingston went on a lengthy attack about Adam Schiff and the impeachment articles against Trump, Reid further admonished him by saying “you just can’t say things that aren’t true,” and she reminded Kingston about what EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland said about the existence of a quid pro quo.
“Maybe the senators who were getting paid $174,000 a year to do a very simple job should listen to [the evidence],” Reid said.
“If there was one, that’s what Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler should’ve built their case on,” Kingston replied.
“Bill Clinton having sexual relations with an intern wasn’t in the articles against him, but Lindsey Graham was happy to impeach him for that” Reid countered.
Hasan got in at that point, slamming Kingston for advancing the “complete falsehood” that Trump was denied the right to have his legal team participate in the House’s hearings. Since Trump’s legal team is running with that claim, Hasan called it evidence of “how weak their defense is.”
“They made one after another falsehood about the process and Jack’s just repeated it,” Hasan said. Kingston tried to interject, but Reid told him to “let [Hasan] finish,” and so he did by asking “how many members of the Republican House attended those hearings in those secret basement rooms? Forty-Eight Republican members of the house were entitled to attend the depositions.”
With the conversation about to spiral out of control, Reid declared “here are the rules of this engagement, Jack. You cannot talk when Mehdi is talking. You’re going to get to respond to everything he said…”
“He asked me a question,” Kingston protested.
“But you started answering it before he got to the period,” Reid continued. “When you get to the period, that’s the end of the sentence, and then you can respond.”
The three of them continued to spar about whether Trump’s defense team lied about what happened during the House hearings, and it all just kept going downhill from there.
Watch above, via MSNBC.
