CNN anchor Chris Cuomo compared an acquittal of President Trump in his impeachment trial to Senate Republicans making a deal with the devil.
Cuomo was speaking with CNN White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins on Monday while she detailed the president’s response to his Senate trial. Last week, the Senate ruled by majority not to call additional witnesses, clearing the way for the trial’s conclusion this week.
“The president doesn’t seem to think that there’s anything to learn from here, except that he believes Democrats have orchestrated this campaign against him,” Collins noted.
After Cuomo thanked Collins for her reporting, the anchor began giving on-air commentary, concluding that “the president has absolutely learned a lesson, and the lesson is he owns this party.”
“He has them in his hand, and when he squeezes his hand, they squeal. He knows he can do whatever he wants. He has more power than any president I’ve seen in my lifetime within his own party. He’s also right that it is a ‘hoax.’ Because the idea of finding things to be wrong and sitting as a senator on a tribunal, where you’re supposed to be a trier of the facts and not having witnesses, is a hoax,” he said before introducing his panel.
Just before opening up the conversation to the panel, Cuomo likened a Senate acquittal of Trump to a deal with the devil, calling such a decision “Faustian.”
“I said it was Faustian. … Faust made his deal with the devil. He wanted everything now, and he’d sell his soul later on. The crossroads here is the vote on witnesses. When you went bad on witnesses, you surrendered your dignity as a senator who was doing a job pointed by the Constitution.”
According to medieval lore, alchemist Johann Georg Faust gave his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and satisfaction of worldly desires.
