Donald Trump has advanced some very awkward defenses of his conduct following the leak of a very embarrassing recording related to his federal indictment. And on MSNBC Tuesday night, Chris Hayes had some fun mocking that defense.
“Save it for the judge,” Hayes cracked.
Of course, by now you know the deal: In 2021, a reporter and editor working on a book recorded a conversation with Trump in which he admitted to possessing several classified documents and admitted that he had no power to declassify them since he was no longer president. Trump also showed one of these documents to the reporter and editor, neither of whom were authorized to view them, while declaring the whole thing “Very cool.” You can read more here.
NBC News has now independently verified the authenticity of the recording, which was first made public by CNN, and so it is Hayes played the recording in full on Tuesday’s “All In.”
“‘This is secret information, look. Look at this,’ unquote,” Hayes said, quoting the recording after the audio clip played. “OK, that’s pretty damning, and it sure seems to debunk Trump’s previous excuse that he magically [de]classified all the documents he stole, possibly without telling anyone. Trump says he has the document, you can hear him rifling through his beautiful mind piles of paper as he admits he did not declassify the documents while president.
“You’d think this would be a pretty open and shut case at this point, but today the indicted ex-president offered a 12-point refutation of the recording,” Hayes said. Then he rolled a clip of a recent interview, which went as follows:
“Everything was fine. We did nothing wrong, and everybody knows it,” Trump said.
“You’re not concerned that your own voice is on those recordings?” the interviewer asked.
“My voice was fine. What did I say wrong in those recordings? I didn’t even see the recording. All I know is I did nothing wrong. We had a lot of papers, a lot of, stacked up. In fact, you could hear the rustle of the paper, and nobody said I did anything wrong other than the fake news, which is Fox too,” Trump responded.
“Are there any other recordings that we should be concerned about?” the interviewer asked.
“I don’t know of any recordings that we should be concerned with, because I don’t do things wrong, I do things right. I’m a legitimate person,” Trump said.
“Save it for the judge, buddy,” Hayes said after the clip ended. Watch it at the top of the page now.
