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Jesse Watters responded to a former George W. Bush administration ethics lawyer who invoked the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) while attacking Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Richard Painter had said Thursday that McConnell’s announcement that he will conduct the Senate’s impeachment trial of President Trump in “coordination” with the White House is akin to a judge empaneling a Caucasian jury in a KKK case.
“For Mitch McConnell to say he’s working with the White House [and] coordinating with the defendant in this trial — before the trial has even begun — is atrocious,” said Painter, who in 2018 ran for office in Minnesota under the Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party banner.
“He may think he’s a judge empaneling an all-white jury for a Klansman trial in Mississippi in 1965. That’s not the kind of trial we have,” Painter said.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum — appearing on the CNN panel with Painter — interrupted the attorney to call his claim “absurd.”
JASON RILEY: GOP SEN. MURKOWSKI USING ‘DEMOCRATIC TALKING POINTS’ ON TRUMP IMPEACHMENT TRIAL
“You know — This is — I’m sorry — You’re being absurd,” said Santorum, a Republican. ” Yes, you are [being ‘absurd’] … The Senate is the one that gets to make the rules, and there’s no requirement in the Senate to listen to witnesses.”
On “The Five,” Watters praised his fellow Pennsylvania native’s objection.
“I’m glad Santorum pushed back there,” Watters said. “An atrocious comparison. You come to expect this.”
He later said it appears such “bomb-throwing” on cable news television has been overall “incentivized.”
Former Ohio Democratic state lawmaker Capri Cafaro said that people must be more judicious when spreading “talking points.”
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“You’ve got to be careful with the talking points,” she said on “The Five,” adding: “Invoking the Ku Klux Klan is like people throwing around ‘Nazi’ — You can say the same kind of thing without being that incendiary.”
On CNN, the former Republican presidential candidate told Painter that he was a U.S. Senator — and therefore a “juror” — during then-President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial and saw how then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., acted at the time.
“I saw what Tom Daschle did in 1998, and I don’t think you were complaining one bit about him carrying the water for [Clinton],” Santorum said to Painter.
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Painter said he disapproved of Daschle’s leadership behavior just as much as he has McConnell in the present day. He said that McConnell, like all senators, swore an oath to the United States — not to the president.
“This is a trial — it’s not a political game,” Painter said.
He said he believes Trump should have been impeached much earlier than this month, claiming the president has not comported himself “in accordance with the Constitution.”
