MSNBC Analyst: After Acquittal, ‘No President’ Was Ever ‘As Powerful As Donald John Trump In This Hour’

MSNBC political analyst Steve Schmidt said that, after his Senate impeachment acquittal, President Donald Trump will be more powerful than any president in U.S. history.

Speaking on Monday during the network’s coverage as the Senate wraps up impeachment proceedings, Schmidt wondered “what line of misconduct” would be “grounds for removal” if Senators agree that what Trump did “was wrong.”

Schmidt, a former GOP campaign strategist who left the party because of his dislike for Trump, accused Senate Republicans of making the legislative branch “subordinate” to the executive and thwarting the concept of “three coequal branches of government.”

“And so the American people in the oldest constitutional republic in the world will have to decide: do we want to have at the head of our country a president or do we want to have a king?” he asked. “Do we want to have an emperor? Do we want to have somebody who sits above the law? Do we want to have somebody who is unaccountable to the institutions that, from the beginning of the country, have said that no institution, no person in the country is above the law? That’s what we fought a revolution for.” 

“And so, there’s a fundamental question that now sits on the table 11 months before an election,” Schmidt continued. “But make no mistake, at the aftermath of this, when he is acquitted, there will never, ever have been an American president with the power that Donald Trump possesses right now in this moment. Not FDR in the second World War. Not Lincoln in the Civil War. No president is as powerful as Donald John Trump in this hour as we get ready to see his acquittal play out.”