MSNBC host Chris Hayes admonished Republican senators who have displayed disinterest in President Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate.
“These people’s jobs is to do this,” Hayes said Wednesday on the network. “This is literally the job. If you find it too annoying or frustrating or uncomfortable to sit for eight hours and listen, you can resign tomorrow and go get another job. But this is your job.”
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For more than eight hours on Wednesday, the managers presented video clips and slide decks, gave impassioned speeches about how they say Trump has abused the office of the presidency, and pleaded with their Republican counterparts to hear them out.
Most Republicans have rallied behind the president, who is accused of pressuring Ukraine to conduct political investigations for him and then attempting to cover up the effort.
Several reporters in the Senate Press Gallery have reported seeing some Republican senators not paying attention, dozing off, or taking frequent breaks by leaving the room altogether.
Senate rules are strict for an impeachment trial. Senators are required to sit still, remain silent, and are not allowed to bring any electronics onto the Senate floor.
Lindsey Graham walked out of the chamber moments before Nadler played a clip of him just now
— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) January 23, 2020
NYT has a sketch artist covering impeachment, catching moments like Sen. Risch sleeping https://t.co/kXf9Voi0Og pic.twitter.com/fH5fee7In4
— Michael Calderone (@mlcalderone) January 22, 2020
Rachel Maddow, another MSNBC host on the network’s post-trial panel, suggested Republican senators who leave the room to go on cable news to defend the president might be violating Senate rules.
“I mean the Senate sergeant-at-arms starts every day by saying ‘upon pain of imprisonment,’ you know, you must sit there silently, it’s effectively what he says, and then people get up and they go and do Fox News interviews in the middle of the trial, which means they are not keeping silent,” Maddow said. “But everybody knows there isn’t a Senate jail — or if there is, they’re not going to use it. And it doesn’t appear that Chief Justice Roberts is planning on intervening in the trial, even on structural matters like this.”
Roberts did offer a rare warning late Tuesday night after an especially terse exchange between Rep. Jerry Nadler and White House defense lawyers.
“I think it is appropriate at this point for me to admonish both the House managers and president’s counsel in equal terms to remember that they are addressing the world’s greatest deliberative body,” Roberts said. “Those addressing the Senate should remember where they are.”
