Two historians implied on MSNBC Monday that the Founders would be disappointed with supporters of former President Donald Trump.
MSNBC contributors Jon Meacham and Michael Beschloss appeared during the network’s coverage of Trump’s trial regarding a $130,000 payout to porn star Stormy Daniels. Both have held meetings with Biden claiming American democracy is at risk.
“Let’s have a very brief, and I promise brief visit, to our Founders in 1787 writing the Constitution. I think they felt that they had created a political system that would choose people as presidents who were not too likely to have been — to be accused of criminal conduct. I think that’s safe,” Beschloss said. “So if they came back in — in 2024, the first thing they would say, I think is, you know, our system did not work. What happened?”
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Meacham said America faces “a moral choice” during the trial and in the 2024 election.
“I think this is fundamentally a moral choice we have to make,” Meacham told MSNBC host Katy Tur. “Do we want — are we able, are just enough of us able to defer our immediate policy desires, our immediate partisan appetites, to say, the system itself, the seeing politics as an arena of contention, where we try to arrive at a consensus for a given period of time. And if we lose a round, we just fight the next one.”
“Is that viable? And just enough of us since 1865, have at critical moment said, yes, that system is worth it. Will that continue? I don’t know. But I do know that it’s up to us, which is at once thrilling and terrifying. It’s thrilling because it’s up to us, and it’s terrifying, because it’s, ‘Oh, Jesus, it’s up to us,’” Meacham, who secretly helped write some of Biden’s speeches for his 2020 presidential campaign, continued.
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Meacham then turned his attention towards Trump supporters, implying they put their loyalty to the former president ahead of the Constitution.
“We have to decide,” Meacham said. “And the people who either support Donald Trump unquestioningly or who have enabled this for their own partisan reasons, have to really look in the mirror and decide, is this really the hill they want to die on? Is Donald Trump worth the Constitution?”
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