Life hack: If you’re going to explain a topic for an audience, it helps to understand the topic first.
MSNBC’s Ali Velshi’s attempt Wednesday to explain “how Impeachment works” contained two glaring factual errors, which he later had to correct on-air.
The segment, titled “How Impeachment Works,” comes one day after President Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort was found guilty on eight charges of bank and tax fraud. The president’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty in the same afternoon to several separate crimes, all of which the attorney claims he committed at the direction of the president.
The verdicts bring “impeachment back to the forefront,” Velshi claimed.
“Let’s take a look at the process of impeachment. First of all, the House of Representatives draws up articles of impeachment. Think of the House as the prosecutor, the document details any, quote, ‘High crimes and misdemeanors that the president is believed to be guilty of,” he said.
Velshi added, “Next, the House votes. At least two-thirds of the chamber has to approve the impeachment. Two hundred and eighty-eight votes, as it’s currently constituted, since there are four vacancies in the House right now.”
This is not true. A simple majority is all that is required for an impeachment vote to move forward in the House, NewsBuster’s Kyle Drennen rightly noted.
Velshi continued, “Once the House approves the articles of impeachment, the matter goes to the Senate, which acts more like a courtroom. … Again, the threshold is two-thirds. So even half the chamber voting to impeach would still acquit the president.”
“Two-thirds of the Senate, 60 as it stands right now, are needed to vote guilty for impeachment,” he added.
This last bit is also not true. He’s right that the Senate requires a two-thirds vote, but that number would be 67, not 60.
Velshi went on the air later Wednesday to correct himself.
“Some days we love social media because a number of you sent me information about something I made a mistake on in the last segment. So I want to correct that real quick,” he said.
He added, “To impeach the president, the House needs only a simple majority, not two-thirds. The House needs a simple majority. The Senate does need a two-thirds majority, but that would be 67 of the senators, 66 of the senators or 67, someone will help you with the math on that, but the fact is, its two-thirds of 100 senators, depending on how many seats in the Senate are actually filled at any given time.”
Other than that, solid work explaining a well-known and heavily covered process.
