MSNBC’s Ari Melber Frets Trump Torched Rule of Law with Comey Charges

EXCERPT:

MELBER: “I reported this week that we are past the red line that if you use the analogy of the boiling frog, when it comes to the rule of law, the frog has been boiled and it’s dead. And we’re now past the red line at a point where we are seeing how people deal with that. In the matter of unconstitutional attacks on free speech, we saw how big, powerful, rich executives might fold and then backtrack. We saw that this week. In the matter of the rule of law, we’ve seen how law firms and other individuals who literally take an oath, they’re not just taxpaying citizens, they’re members of the bar. How they have dealt with these efforts by Donald Trump to abuse power, to use the federal government to deny people legal services, or make it harder with what are probably, some courts say, likely unconstitutional efforts to kneecap law firms based on their First Amendment and other legal rights, who they associate with or represent. Trump’s brazen efforts to do this have come with confessions in public. And in our strange time, our rapidly shifting media ecosystem. Some people say, ‘Well, how bad can it be if he’s saying it in public?’ But again, he has admitted to many things in public that he just wants you to accept. Whether or not a judge or jury ultimately accepts this case is one test, but it’s not the only one because there is a wider effort to abuse government power, to not only go after people who have taken great risks or done public service, or used their First Amendment rights to speak out against him. That is an issue that unites Jimmy Kimmel and James Comey this week in different ways, but government efforts to target that. Donald Trump doesn’t deny that. They didn’t deny that they were targeting Kimmel for what he said, and they don’t deny they’re targeting Comey for his, what they view as opposition to Trump, which is allowed in this country. You still are allowed to serve in the government and then criticize the government, or be a citizen and criticize the government. So there are big concerns here about the DoJ’s independence.”

(via Mediaite)