On Tuesday, MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes said on his show “All In” that the federal indictment against former President Donald Trump laid out the “greatest political crime” since states seceded during the Civil War.
Hayes said, “With Donald Trump, lots of things are unprecedented. The first time he was indicted was unprecedented, and the second time was indicted was unprecedented, because of the federal indictment had never come down. This is in the canon of American events, January 6 and its aftermath. The reason is that for 159 years after the cannons fire at Fort Sumter, there is an unbroken chain of transfer of power. Not only that, the core story of the American experiment is its fight within itself to be true to the radical promise of democracy. That is why Lincoln says at the battlefield at Gettysburg that the question before the nation is whether a nation of, by, and for the people can long endure. It’s a test whether the thing can last.”
He continued, “That is in a category of itself in American history, the Civil War and the death and misery. But this is the greatest political crime since secession. And the gravest test, that Lincoln called on the battlefield in Gettysburg of whether a nation of, by, and for the people, that we are our own masters, whether that can long endure. So I feel profoundly gratified by reading this document because it calls into question in a way that has not quite been called yet.”
Hayes concluded, “If the law is not for this, what is it for?”
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