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tv   The Last Word With Lawrence O Donnell  MSNBC  May 23, 2024 10:00pm-11:00pm PDT

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her uncle's unhappy. i'm sensing an underlying issue. it's t-mobile. it started when we tried to get him under a new plan. but they they unexpectedly unraveled their “price lock” guarantee. which has made him, a bit... unruly. you called yourself the “un-carrier”. you sing about “price lock” on those commercials. “the price lock, the price lock...” so, if you could change the price, change the name! it's not a lock, i know a lock. so how can we undo the damage? we could all unsubscribe and switch to xfinity. their connection is unreal. and we could all un-experience this whole session. okay, that's uncalled for. donald trump's three supreme court justices have not yet proven themselves to be worse or more ethically challenged than the two who are now in an intense competition for the title of worst supreme
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court justice. clarence thomas and samuel alito. they were each appointed 15 years apart by presidents from connecticut who wanted you to believe they were from texas. the bushes were born in connecticut where the family had deep roots. the father of the first president bush was prescott bush. republican senator from connecticut. the bush family preferred to go to college close to home so father and son presidents both went to yale. they were called country club republicans. they hated paying taxes. the first president bush was a supporter of planned parenthood before he was selected to be ronald reagan's running mate in 1980 whereupon he had to suddenly pretend he was opposed to any and all abortions. by the time george w. bush was
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running for president, country club republicans had been banished from the party and replaced by born again christians which george w. bush claimed to be. 1988 was one of those years when presidential campaign polls could not have been more wrong giving massachusetts governor michael dukakis a 17 point lead in the summer over vice president george h. w. bush. we are suffering with the reign of clarence thomas on the supreme court because george h. w. bush won the presidential election in 1988. served only one term and left only one legacy. clarence thomas. clarence thomas who has clearly become the most publicly corrupt supreme court justice in history. taking massment amounts of money. hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a motor home. he has not paid income taxes on that money that has been handed
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to him by a billionaire who doesn't want clarence thomas to have to live on his salary as a supreme court justice and his wife's substantial income. clarence thomas may be a tax criminal. we don't know yet. because he refuses to answer questions about the tax treatment of all the money that has been handed directly to him. a personal financial corruption, as egregious as it is, does not leave the mark on history that corruption of judicial scholarship leaves on the lives of everyone living under laws written, some would say invented by the supreme court. which brings us to samuel alito who was the product of a presidential election that was decided by the republican majority on the supreme court. in the year 2000 when the supreme court decided to stop
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counting votes in florida, their decision, they knew, gave the election to george w. bush over vice president al gore. george w. bush was the first candidate in history who did not get the most votes but won the presidency. al gore got more votes than the person who won the electoral college. or was awarded the electoral college. by the supreme court. that was the first time in my life i heard people who spent their lives respecting the supreme court suddenly saying that the supreme court had become just another partisan institution. many people, me included, tried to think of it as a single decision that was a close call that looked partisan. but might not be. time would tell.
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if the supreme court had become another warm of republican governments. now, 24 years later, it is worse than anyone thought in 2000. after the bush v gore decision. samuel alito was the first and only supreme court heckler during a state of the union address. samuel alito disgraced himself and the supreme court when he decided he had something to say during the state of the union by the first black president of the united states. >> last week, the supreme court reversed a century of law that i believe will open the flood gates for special interests including foreign corporations to spend without limit in our election. >> there was alito saying not true. when president obama was criticizing the court's disastrous decision on campaign finance. samuel alito was listening to a president who went to a better law school than he did and was
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a better law student. president obama was the president of the harvard law review. was it a coincidence that the president was black? would alito have pulled his punk stunt against a white democratic president? he hasn't done it again with joe biden. but then samuel alito has not shown up for a single state of the union address since that time in 2010 when he decided to talk back to the president of the united states. when he decided to be the first and only supreme court justice to ever do that. the year before he did that, republican house member joe wilson, the first heckler of a president in an address to a joint session of congress. he famously yelled you lie at president obama. carson wilson's voters in south carolina no doubt loved that.
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and now, heckling the president is something that marjorie taylor greene and her friends think they are good at during state of the union addresses. so think about that. first a vile clown congressman yells you lie to president obama. and then, the next year, a supreme court justice says not true. to president obama during his state of the union address. and now, republicans heckle the president during the state of the union address and samuel alito is one of them. if he was in the house, he would be in the back benches with marjorie taylor greene yelling at the president. he has given an explanation for why he was flying the american flag upside down that is obviously a lie. no sane person could believe it. unless, unless it is to be taken as an insanity defense by
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justice alito. when the new york times reported that the alito home had the american flag flying upside down after the january 6th attack on the capitol which happened right across the street from the supreme court, justice alito told this lie as his official explanation. i had no involvement whatsoever in flying the flag. it was briefly placed by mrs. alito in response to a neighbor's use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard lines. justice alito did not have the decency to come up with a story that had minimal logic in it. like his supreme court opinions, he did not care how preposterous that defense was. so a supreme court justice wants you to believe that his wife saw something in a neighbor's yard that made her run out to the flag pole, pull down the american flag, turn it
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upside down, and run the american flag back up the flag pole upside down. as some kind of non-verbal insult payback to her neighbor. i refuse to believe that about mrs. alito. and i refuse to believe a supreme court justice's attempt to blame this on his wife. two full days have passed since the second flag was found at the second alito home. the one that was carried by the attackers of the capitol on january 6th. just like the upside down american flag was. this one is called an appeal to heaven flag. justice alito has not recused himself from two cases currently pending before supreme court involving the attack on the capitol on january 6th including donald trump's possible complicity in that attack. he has an obligation to recuse
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himself because recusal is based on the appearance of bias, not the actual fact of bias. appearance is enough. the fact doesn't have to be proved, it can simply be a reasonable suspicion of bias. justice's alito's bias about the second flag amplifies this every day. george w. bush did this. voter who's didn't want the supreme court to take their rights away but decided there was no real difference between al gore and george w. bush did this. voters who did not show up to vote in 2000 because they didn't think anything was really at stake. did this. we are living in the world created by the voters who through neglect or their own choice elected george w. bush and the voters who through neglect or their own choice
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elected donald j. trump. there is only one way for us to stop the control of our lives by the first president bush and the second president bush and donald trump and their supreme court justice. justices and that is to vote for a president who will not appoint people like samuel alito to the supreme court. there is only one person now. one person standing between us and the next samuel alito. and that person is joe biden. today, the supreme court issued a samuel alito decision not surprisingly rejecting a challenge to south carolina's congressional redirecting back. a challenge brought by voters who said it was deliberately designed to reduce black participation and representation in the house of
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representatives. justice kagan referred to alito's coat upside down application of the law. justice alito actually used the phrase upside down twice. in her dissenting opinion. an obvious reference to samuel alito's upside down american flag and his upside down legal scholarship. leading off our discussion now is professor lawrence tribe who taught constitutional law all- star high school four or five decades. i have to ask you, professor tribe, i feel sometimes when we discuss these things, like i'm talking to a chemistry professor who has been teaching the periodic table of elements for more than half of his life. and suddenly, the periodic table of elements is just being ripped up. and chemistry becomes guess work. and scholarship has disappeared. i just can't imagine what it feels like to be in the field
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of constitutional law. and trying to teach constitutional law on such shifting ground. >> i have to say, it feels challenging, lawrence. to say the least. it's like turning the table of elements upside down. it wasn't just the american flag that samuel alito flew upside down. he has turned much of the constitution as much as he can get his hands on upside down and inside out. he did that with the law of racial gerrymandering today that was a brilliant by justice kagan. the use of this or that phrase, she just showed that in every
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respect, samuel alito, there was a decision in which she had written the mayorty in 2017. he had written the dissent. and he basically treats that case as though the dissent was the law. so, samuel alito has not acquitted himself very well. these two flags signal sympathy with the insurrectionists. ranging from my wife did it to utter silence in the second case. and, the excuses a lot of republicans are giving. some of them are saying that the appeal to heaven flag was after all similar to the one used by george washington when he was expressing the virtues
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of revolution against king george. but in this case, we are not talking about a revolution against a foreign king. we are talking about an insurrection against the transition of power by someone who would make himself king. it is all the difference in the world. >> i want to listen to something that justice alito said in the supreme court during the arguments on the question of immunity for donald trump. let's listen to this. >> if an incumbent who loses the very close hotly contested election knows that a real possibility, uh, after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that
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destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy? >> that for me was the born yesterday comment, the likes of which i have never heard from the supreme court. here is a justice who is ignoring not just judicial history, but history we know. 230 years of that never happening. >> right. it's amazing. he is imagining that the real danger is that the president who knows that if he commits terrible crimes, he might be prosecuted. that, that is going to create a terrible situation as you say we haven't had. as he ignores the danger of the president who says i can commit whatever crimes i want including crimes against the country to stay in power after
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i lose the election. and i will be home free. i'll have absolute immunity. it turns everything upside down to have that sense of what the dangers are and i think that we now know this case siting in the court for a very long time is a case in which the president of the united states might be given de facto immunity if the court just sits on it until the end of june and then sends it back down to the judge or the dc circuit for further proceedings, we will never get an answer of whether the president of the united states as he then was, was guilty of abusing his power to stay in power. and commit crimes. because if he becomes president again, he will simply fire any attorney general who would keep
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the prosecution going. so, that right now, the supreme court is complicit in granting those who hold the greatest power in the country of the kind of get out of jail free card that will make them even more willing to commit crimes than trump was. >> thank you. coming up, donald trump lost another appeal today. this time in new york in his absurd attempt to remove judge juan merchan from preceding over his criminal trial. andrew weissman joins us next. . andrew weissman joins us next. because you know the right way to save. stop! save with drivewise and get a rate based on you. you're in good hands with allstate.
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lie. about the fbi search of his florida home. >> i got most of us got a solicitation email this morning from the former president of the united states saying the justice department had authorization to kill him during the mar-a-lago raid. can you give us clarification on that particular point he is making and whether deadly force is authorized in other interventions including the search of mr. biden's residence and office? and the second question. >> one at time. okay. on that one, that allegation is false. and it is extremely dangerous. the document that is being referred to in the allegation is a justice department standard policy limiting the use of force. as the fbi advises, it is part of the standard operations plan for searches and in fact, it
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was even used in the consensual search of president biden's home. >> we dealt with this nonsense last night. the fbi rules restricting the use of deadly force, not authorizing the use of deadly force are part of the paperwork of every fbi search warrant today. a new york appeals court denied donald trump's appeal of his motion to remove judge juan merchan from presiding over donald trump's criminal trial in manhattan which is almost over. it is one of the many pointless appeals that donald trump's lawyers pursue because they are being paid not by donald trump, but by the weakest minded trump supporters who actually send money to donald trump to pay for his criminal defense lawyers. those contributors are the first in the history of presidential campaigning to send money to their candidate
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to pay for criminal defense lawyers. joining our discussion now is andrew weissman. former chief of the criminal division. msnbc legal analyst and coauthor of the best selling book the trump indictments. so no surprise on the recusal motion being denied at the appeals level. this is going off in every single direction that the contributors fund them to do. >> so, tonight, there is an ability since there is no trial today to sort of step back and i notice what we are trying to do is compose like a logical and legal grid, the things that are illogical. so that is the clip you played of merrick garland.
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is him basically going, look, okay, that's crazy. and to use nicole wallace's expression, earth 1 and earth 2. and you know, the ill logic of donald trump saying i think he was planning to kill me is he is actually in the supreme court right now arguing that the president of the united states should have that ability. so really? because that is what you are arguing he should be able to do. and now you are saying oh, it is outrageous he is doing it. but that is in fact what donald trump, if he is reelected, that is exactly what he wants to be doing. with juan merchan, this is of course, look, the trial is over. so i mean, he is not going to get them removed at this point. and the courts rightly are keeping him there. but he has already gone back to the 2016 play book of saying juan merchan, of course. he is unfair. look where he came from. i mean, and it is all that sort
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of dog whistle and megaphone on what he means. it is really something where it is very hard to sit here and sort of have a logical dispassionate conversation because you are not really dealing with something where they are playing on that playing field. >> judge merchan, born in south america, columbia. his family came to the united states. he worked his way through school on the low level jobs someone would have to get in new york city to work his way through school and i have to say, i have never seen a better presiding judge in trial. i have seen judges as good. i mean, it is not unusual for judges to be that good. it is hard to think of a trial judge under more pressure than what he has been under, unique pressure that no other judge has had. he has a former president of the united states as a defendant. how do you handle that.
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and, it is just the great tragedy of this trial, not being televised is that america couldn't see that. >> i couldn't agree more. we don't know about the jury yet. >> attacking the judge's daughter. >> and you wouldn't know that for a second in any of his rulings. he is really remarkable. >> every day. good morning mr. trump from the judge. and of course, nothing back from trump. andrew weissman, thank you very much. >> you're welcome. coming up, is there an insurrectionist or maybe two on the united states supreme
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in america, no one is above the law. that includes the supreme court. that includes samuel alito. >> in his latest new york times column published before yesterday's new york times report about the second flag signifying support for donald trump's attempt to illegally overturn the last presidential election, flying over a home owned by supreme court justice
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samuel alito, jamel bowie wrote there is no question that justice alito is a genuine republican partisan more than willing to share views that echo narratives aired throughout conservative media. it is not that farfetched to think that a supreme court justice might have internalized the extreme views of the insurrectionist right. there is every reason and then some to think that alito believes many of the same things that any other republican of his age and ideological disposition might also believe. especially when his social world seems to consist of similarly like-minded goal- oriented partisans. joining us now is jamel bowie. cohost of the podcast unclear and present danger. thank you for joining us
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tonight. your column really made me think of samuel alito more clearly. i'm one of those people that has to get rid of this notion of looking up at the supreme court. since i was a child, looking at these legendary supreme court justices thinking they were of another order and they were more careful, more scholarly. when in fact, there is no available evidence that sam alito isn't the guy he would be if he had never become a judge. just that guy at the republican country club saying those things. >> i think that is right. i think. and it is not just alito. if you look at the history of the supreme court. it has been filled with partisans. people who are advancing a set of political goals. and so, i think it is useful
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really to understand that the members of the court are political actors. in the case of justice alito, a partisan actor in the most recent story about the flag flying at his new jersey vacation home that night, the new york times, my employer ran yesterday. i think it is just more evidence for exactly this. i don't really know what else you could conclude looking at these two stories other than the fact that, other than the conclusion that justice alito has these insurrectionist sympathies as the very least. which makes it unacceptable that he is offering any opinions on the cases before the court. concerning the former president. >> that's the big issue here. that he is so obviously biased in a job where you are supposed to recuse yourself if there is the slightest appearance of
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bias. >> that's right. and we as a public can have no faith that he will judge these cases according to their merits versus what would most benefit his partisan and ideological allies. my sense especially in trump united states, my sense is that justice alito's questioning at the very least in oral arguments for that case does suggest a real sympathy for the former president and his allies that goes beyond some sort of dispassionate analysis of the situation. and much more an affinity. >> alito as we played that
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alito voiced the trump january madness dreamscape of every president of the united states being prosecuted somehow at the instigation. ignoring 230 years of history where that had never happened. that is a public failure of a very basic intelligence test. if you said that in high school, you would flunk the american history course. >> that's right. it is a ridiculous supposition that justice alito made. i want to zoom out real quick and say that i think that this scandal around justice alito and justice thomas, the fact that the roberts court over the last several years has been overturning major precedence and untethered in the past. all of this is a sign that
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reforming the supreme court needs to be a high priority. for people who believe that progressive politics is something that should be pursued or people who believe that americans have a right to self-government. that this court of out of control. and seems aware of the fact that there is not much immediately that can be done. there are options. there are possibilities. and they need to be on the table. thinking about how to respond to a court that seems to hold large parts of it. >> this is a court in crisis. thank you so much for expanding my thinking with your writing and thank you very much for joining us tonight. >> thank you. and coming up, there is one place in america where it is against the rules to mention that donald trump is an
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became the chairman of the house rules committee. chair of the rules committee was jim mcgovern's dream when he was elected to the house of representatives in 1996. jim mcgovern finally became the chairman of the house rules committee in 2019. and now, with the democrats in the minority, he serves as what they call the ranking member of the committee meaning the highest ranking member of the committee in the minority party. on the floor of the house today, he gave the rules of the house a new test, an unprecedented test. >> republicans are skipping their real jobs to take day trips up to new york to try to undermine donald trump's criminal trial. no time to work for democrats. stand behind trump with their bright red ties like pathetic props. maybe they want to distract
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from the fact their candidate for president has been indicted more times than he has been elected. maybe they don't want to talk about the fact that the leader of their party is on trial for covering up hush money payments to a porn star for political gain not to mention three other criminal felony prosecutions he is facing. i understand why my republican friends want to distract from donald trump. they want to talk about how he sold out our allies so they bring silly things like this to the floor to deflect blame and distract from the fact that they have no real vision. just division. and no real plans for making life better for the american people. and with that, i reserve my time. >> the chair would like to remind members to refrain from engaging in personalities toward presumed nominees for the office of the president.
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the gentleman from massachusetts reserves, the gentlewoman from indiana is recognized. >> massachusetts isn't the only word that jerry lee carl jr. of mobile, alabama cannot pronounce. jerry lee carl who has no idea what he is doing up there at the podium and has to read every word he says was elected to the house of representatives in 2020 and was defeated earlier this year in a republican primary by a fellow republican congressman from alabama who was redistricted out of the district that decided to take jerry lee carl's seat away from him. so these are jerry legal carl's final days in the house of representatives. it is very unlikely he will say anything again in the house to come to our attention. but he had the misfortune yesterday of being the junior member assigned to the thankless task of mechanically presiding over the house when congressman jim mcgovern
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presented him with a challenge that jerry lee carl simply could not comprehend. >> yeah, mr . speaker, a few moments ago, i was admonished for stateing the simple pact that the former president was indicted by a grand jury and is on trial in a court of law. that is not my opinion. it is just the truth. so i have an inquiry mr . speaker. >> the gentleman will state his inquiry. >> has the chair determined its unparliamentary to state a fact? >> the chair is not in a position to determine the veracity of remarks made on the floor. members must avoid personality. >> well, that is unbelievable. last week during debate, a republican member of this house said and i quote, watch the former president of the united
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states being hauled into court day after day with a sham trial. end quote. he wasn't admonished. i just referenced the same trial, and i was. so, mr . speaker, i have to ask a further parliamentary inquiry. >> the gentleman will state his inquiry. >> mr . speaker, is it correct that members of congress can mention the trial of the presumptive nominee for president, call it a sham, and question the integrity of the judge, but, a reference to the mere existence of that same trial without any characterization, that is out of order? >> the chair will not issue an advisory of opinion. >> one last parliamentary inquiry mr . speaker. is this restriction originally founded at least in part on the principle and jefferson's
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manual that quote in parliament, to speak irreverently against the king is against order, is that what this is about? i have jefferson's manual here. >> members must avoid personality ins debate. the chair will direct members to rule 17 in section 370 of the house rules and manual. >> so, it is in fact based on jefferson's manual. mr . speaker, donald trump might want to be a king. but he is not a king. he is not a presumptive king. he is not even the president. he is a presumptive nominee and i know you are trying to do your job and follow precedent but frankly at some point it is time for this body to recognize there is no precedent for this situation. we have a presumptive nominee for president facing 88 felony counts and we are being
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prevented from even acknowledging it. these are not alternative facts. these are real facts. a candidate for president of the united states is on trial for sending a hush money payment to a porn star to avoid a sex scandal during his 2016 campaign. and then fraudulently disguising those payments in violation of the law. he is also charged with conspiring to overturn the election. he is also charged with stealing classified information. and a jury has already found him liable for rape in a civil court. and yet, in this republican controlled house, it is okay to talk about the trial but you have to call it a sham. >> we take down his words. >> it is okay to say the jury is rigged. >> i demand his words be taken down. >> it. >> the gentleman will suspend. indiana? demand the words be taken down. the gentleman from
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massachusetts will be seated. >> the clerk will import the words. >> so the clerk of the house had to consult with the parliamentarian to determine which words violated the rules of the house. it took over an hour with the house floor silent for the entire time. before the clerk was ready to report the offending words. >> order. >> the clerk will report the words. >> we have a presumptive nominee for president. facing 88 felony counts. and we are being prevented from acknowledging it. being preven acknowledging it. a candidate for president of the united states is on trial for sending a hush money payment to a porn star to avoid a sex scandal during his
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2016 campaign and fraudulently disguising payments in violation of the law. he's also charged with conspiring to overturn the election. he's also charged with stealing classified information, and a jury has already found him liable for rape in a civil court, yet in this republican controlled house, it is okay to talk about the trial but you have to call it a sham. it is okay to say the jury is rigged, but not that trump should be held accountable. it's okay to say the court is corrupt, but not trump is corrupting the rule of law. >> the chair is prepared to rule. the words of the gentleman of massachusetts accused the presumed nominee of the office of president of engaging in illegal activities. the presumed nominee for the office of president are according to the same rules of decorum and debate as a sitting president.
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actual party nominees is a, is not a prerequisite for treatments under the presided as though they are nominees. i messed that one up, i'm sorry. the chair has abolished members on the basis of numerous occasions. >> yeah, you heard right. he said abolished members when he meant admonished members. >> although remarks in debate may include criticism of such candidate's official position as a candidate, it's a breach of order to refer to the candidate in terms personally offensive whether by actually accusing or by merely insulting. also, as such, in section 370 of the manual, the acquisition that the president has committed a crime or even that the president has done something illegal is not in
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order. >> yep. jerry lee said the acquisition that the president has committed a crime when of course he meant the accusation that the president has committed a crime. he's not good at reading in public. >> the chair relies on the, um, the precincts of march 19th, 1988. >> yeah, he meant precedents, but he said the precincts of march 19th, 1988. >> and finds that the remarks consistently a personal attack. without objections, the offensive words are stricken from the record. >> and so those words will not be in the congressional record. so this is the country you live in in 2024. the country where it is against the rules of the house
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of representatives to say. >> the leader of their party is on trial for covering up hush money payments to a porn star for political gain, not to mention three other criminal felony prosecutions he's facing. >> unbelievable. >> well, that's unbelievable. last week during debate, a republican member of this house said, and i quote, watch the former president of the united states being hauled into court day after day with a sham trial, end quote. he wasn't admonished. i just referenced the same trial, and i was.
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