The hyperbole is now officially off the charts.
Democrats and mainstream media members have ramped up the hyperbole and wild speculation about President Donald Trump’s future after special counsel Robert Mueller released his damaging Friday filing about former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.
As the filing indicated, Cohen (shown above left) claimed Trump directed him to violate federal campaign finance laws to influence the 2016 presidential election by making hush-money payments to two women who have claimed they had affairs with Trump — something the president vehemently denies.
But prosecutors would have to be able to prove that Trump purposefully ordered the hush-money payment to further his campaign, instead of paying it merely to prevent personal embarrassment.
It didn’t take long for media members and Democrats to run wild with the Cohen filing and predict impeachment, incarceration, and more for the president of the United States.
Here are nine of the most “notable” responses:
1.) Former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal said Monday on CNN’s “New Day” that the “incredibly damning document” means that Trump’s “future” after his presidency will be spent “behind bars unless he cuts some sort of deal with the prosecutors.”
“This is not an ordinary campaign contribution,” Katyal said.
“These are potentially the most significant campaign contributions ever in the history of the United States. These payoffs very well may have swung the entire election.”
2.) ABC News correspondent Terry Moran said Sunday on “This Week” that Friday was a “bad day, dark night” for Trump’s presidency that “is going to be, really, a fight to the finish, not just for the survival of the presidency, but for the people who — who voted for President Trump.”
3.) Susan Glasser, CNN global affairs analyst, pointed on Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” to the significance of the language describing Trump as “Individual-1” in the filing.
“And again, you have this memorable phrase of ‘individual number one.’ You know, it’s going to go down, I think, in the history books along with some of those memorable Watergate phrases, right?”
Glasser pointed to the “unindicted co-conspirator” phrase ascribed to former President Richard Nixon.
“I think you’re always going to remember this ‘individual number-one’ and Donald Trump, for starters,” Glasser said.
4.) MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch celebrated on Monday on “Morning Joe” that “we’re going to see up close and personal a guy, a man, a president, completely unravel.”
“And it’s just the beginning,” Deutsch added. “And he is going to pay for that the rest of his life … Where it’s going to crash and burn is on the entire Trump Organization, which is built as a criminal enterprise, which was built with Russian money laundering. This is just the tip of the iceberg.”
5.) Legendary investigative reporter Carl Bernstein — one half of the well-known Woodward and Bernstein duo — said Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” “I think it’s very obvious that there has been a criminal conspiracy led by the president of the United States to obstruct justice. It’s hard to see otherwise in the filings that have been made public thus far.”
Related: Mueller’s Cohen and Manafort Filings: ‘No Evidence’ of Trump-Russia Collusion
6.) Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) claimed Sunday on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that “we have to look at the campaign law violations in the context of other allegations of wrongful conduct by the president” — regardless of whether or not any of the allegations are true.
Schiff was referring to the unproven allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
7.) Liberal Princeton professor Eddie Glaude said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” “We’re beginning to see it’s not going to be a shoe that’s going to drop — it’s going to be an anvil. It’s just when it’s going to drop, all right?”
“And it seems to me that if the Democrats do not pursue [impeachment] vigorously, they will be in some ways held accountable for abdicating their responsibility,” Glaude claimed.
“Democracy is at stake,” Glaude went on. “And it seems to me … if Democrats don’t take their responsibility seriously, they will be held responsible for what happens.”
8.) Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) claimed on MSNBC’s “AM Joy” that Trump “is the most impeachable president ever and the facts need to come out to show the American public he has committed impeachable offenses.”
“I think there are probably recordings and smoking guns that will come out and then it will be like Watergate,” Cohen said.
9.) MSNBC host Laurence O’Donnell said on “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” that Trump “will be, must be, impeached because of the crimes prosecutors say he committed in the Michael Cohen case.”
Check out the video below:
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