Hosts of MSNBC’s The Weekend were unable to contain their fury over Donald Trump reportedly celebrating efforts to overturn the 2020 election at a secretive party on Saturday night.
The bash, held at Mar-a-Lago without prior advertisement or invitations sent out to the press, featured the Republican president-elect praising attorney John Eastman’s role in pressuring then-Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the results of the presidential vote four years ago, NBC News reported.
Against a backdrop of clips documenting Eastman’s efforts, Trump is understood to have told party attendees, “I’m a big fan of John Eastman. Y’know, he was right. He happened to be right. That’s why they changed the law and nobody wants to talk about that.”
Trump reportedly then went on, “They said he’s not allowed to do it, he’s not allowed to do it, and they convinced him he’s not allowed to do it, our vice president, then right after the election they changed the law so he can’t do it.”
His comments also follow the president-elect telling reporters earlier in December that he plans to pardon participants in the Capitol Riots just as soon as he takes office later this month.
Over at MSNBC on Sunday morning, host Michael Steele asked his fellow panelists, “What was the sense in this room, what was the purpose of this gathering, is it just an in-your-face-moment or just a tale of things to come?”
Correspondent Vaughn Hilyard replied, “Let’s be very clear, there’s no coincidence that this event in which he welcomed not only John Eastman, but Michael Flynn, and Jeffrey Clark–the man [who] urged the DoJ to put off all statements about the 2020 election–and they were up onstage, Rudy Guliani was up onstage, and Peter Navarro, who spent time for not complying with the subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee, and they were watching a film that was a documentary about John Eastman.”
Co-host Symone Sanders Townsend was decidedly more succinct in her response, saying, “Let’s just put a finer point on it, this is sickening! This is sickening, I am sick. Peter Navarro, Jeffrey Clark, the people that went to the Capitol to take up arms against the United States government, because the president at the time lied to them, that’s what happened.”
She then went on, “Those are not patriots. What Donald Trump did last night is a disgrace to the country and Constitution, and the fact that they didn’t tell anybody about it lets you know that they knew what they were doing was untoward, and they wanted to do it anyway.”
