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Here’s what struck me when I read the indictment in special counsel Jack Smith's 2020 election interference case: Two things in this country right now are 100% Republican.
One is the evidence in this case. It is 100% Republican evidence. It is Donald Trump's advisers, his office holders, his aides, his campaign officials — they are all Republican. They are all Trump supporters.
The other thing that is 100% Republican in this country right now are the people who are lying about this, continue to lie about this, and have allowed Trump to bend the Constitution to the point of almost breaking it.
Maybe the saddest thing for me Tuesday night after the indictment was unsealed was seeing Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., attack the so-called weaponization of President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice.
We were watching in real time someone lose their moral compass. Someone sacrificing their character at the altar of political ambition. Someone who knows better, who was there, who saw what happened on Jan. 6, who saw people running for their lives, who knows what Trump did was wrong and has said it wrong.
The thing that kills me about all this is that if Trump has evidence of widespread election fraud, which is what it will take to overcome this indictment, he still not has shown it anywhere.
If all these people — the Fox News opinion leaders, the GOP senators who went to Harvard and Yale like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley — have evidence, then why haven't the American people seen it?
There is no evidence of fraud. None. What little they had, they tried and they lost. It went up in flames in dozens and dozens of courts across the country.
So this really is about whether the rule of law is going to survive. And if it wobbles, it will be for one reason: Republicans in this country who lost their love of country in order to further their political ambition.
This is an excerpt from Wednesday's episode of "Morning Joe." It has been slightly edited for length and clarity.