MSNBC anchor Nicole Wallace expressed her shock Friday over President Trump’s “brazen” speech at the Department of Justice, in which he named several of his perceived enemies in the press, including MSNBC correspondents, and stated that they should “go to jail.”
“This should scare you,” said political strategist Basil Smikle, who is also a Professor at Columbia University.
“It’s completely brazen and public. Replacing the rule of law with Trump’s political hit list is breathtaking,” said Wallace after Trump named Marc Elias, who was due to join the show in the next hour, and Andrew Weissmann, a former top official at the DOJ who was part of the show’s virtual panel.
Watch the discussion about Trump’s DOJ address in the embedded video above
“The atmosphere is really just night and day from what it typically would be in the Department of Justice,” said former DOJ Pardon Attorney Elizabeth Oyer, who Trump fired after she refused to restore Mel Gibson’s gun rights, which had been revoked after a 2011 misdemeanor domestic violence conviction.
“In meetings, people are taking the seat in the back of the room. They’re shrinking as far from the person running the meeting as possible, and they are quiet…. people are afraid to speak up,” Oyer continued.
Oyer added, “That is a really scary place to be in an institution entrusted with making extremely high-stakes decisions about our public safety and our national security.”
Smikle told Wallace, “What’s so scary is that students are being disappeared off of college campuses [and] you have a sitting president who has closed down the enforcement mechanisms of multiple departments across government, education, aid, other agencies, but he will take a moment to stand at the Department of Justice and say, ‘This department here is mine. I’m going to take everybody out that I don’t like replacing it with the people I do want…”
Smikle summed up that if there was ever a time to get “off the fence” and act, it should be now: “This should scare you.”
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