Fox News host Chris Wallace has offered praise for the opening presentation offered by Democrats in former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, which he said laid out a “very strict legal argument.”
“I thought it was a very powerful opening,” Wallace said on Tuesday afternoon, following the presentation from Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Joe Neguse, D-Colo., which he said used “a conservative legal philosophy.”
The “Fox News Sunday” anchor said their presentation “had a lot of substance to it. It had a lot of technological slickness to it. The video of the events of Jan. 6. The use of graphics to make the point about what’s in the Constitution. The historical precedent. I thought what was particularly in a legal, as opposed to the emotional side, in a very strict legal argument. I thought Joe Neguse, the congressman from Colorado, made a particularly strong argument. What he did, he took a conservative legal philosophy, originalism, textualism, read the Constitution exactly as it was written, and used that against the president.”
He added, “I thought his close was very strong. What happened on Jan. 6, he said, [was] the framers’ worst nightmare come to life, and that a president can’t enflame insurrection and run away. You are going to hear this over and over again — a ‘January exception.’ The idea that a president [can’t] commit crimes, allegedly, and then leave office, and somehow he’s thereby off the hook.
“I will say one last thing as someone who’s covered a lot of trials,” Wallace continued. “When you hear one side’s argument it seems like that’s overwhelming — and how could there be any argument on the other side? The defense is going to take two hours now to present the reasons why this trial shouldn’t be held, and I’m sure they will make a lot of good points, too. So let’s just wait and listen.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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