Rachel Maddow questioned the motive behind former President Donald Trump's indictment Thursday on MSNBC's "The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell."
The longtime host of "The Rachel Maddow Show" drew on history when suggesting that the Department of Justice could use the recent indictment as leverage to push Trump out of the 2024 race.
"You have to wonder if the Justice Department is considering whether there is some political solution to this criminal problem," Maddow said, citing the 1973 resignation of former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew.
"Whether part of the issue here is not just that Trump has committed crimes, but that Trump has committed crimes and plans on being back in the White House," she continued, "do they consider as part of a potential plea offer something that would proscribe him from running for office again? I don't know."
O'Donnell shot down Maddow's theory. He said the party dynamics have changed too much since 1973, when Agnew was accused of bribery during his tenure in office.
"I'm not saying that's the way this should go for former President Trump; I'm just saying that is the closest allegory that we've got in history," Maddow replied.
Rob Schmitt, host of Newsmax's "Rob Schmitt Tonight," responded Friday to Maddow on Twitter, calling the dialogue "hilarious" and representative of the mainstream media saying the "quiet part out loud."
Schmitt later brought the news up on his show to Jeffrey Clark, former acting assistant attorney general, who theorized that Maddow was "channeling people that she's talking to inside the Justice Department."
"The president cannot be selected by one prosecutor," Clark said.
Trump was indicted Thursday by a grand jury in Miami, Florida, on 37 counts related to sensitive documents he housed at his Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, The New York Times reported.
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