they have the alien edition acts. people like adams was eager to arrest people with differing views. so, our constitution has really been able to weather these types of periods, but it s a dangerous thing for both sides to use this term. mike barnacle. jonathan, let s stick with the constitution. what s your view? can the president of the united states, can any president of the united states be indicted? in my view a president can be. now, i tend to have a sort of madisnian view. i tend to have a more limited view of the white house. i don t see why a president cannot be indicted. i think it is an unanswered question. i think there is good faith arguments on both sides. but federal judges also can be impeached but they also can be indicted. i don t agree with people who say, well, this would be unworkable. in all reality if a president is indicted it s unlikely he would see a trial during his term, but
not standing to clap during his state of the union. the white house is pushing back at senator jeff flake who called out the president for those comments. sarah huckabee sanders tells reporters that the white house doesn t really care what the arizona republican has to say. let s bring in law professor jonathan turly has a new column on the widespread talk of treason that seems to be breaking out in washington. so, jonathan, we ve seen lists over the weekend of times in the past, but democrats have suggested republicans are either treasonist or hostage takers or acting like terrorists. i remember when i was in congress, i haven t said that in a couple months, republican members in our own coalition would accuse us of being terrorists and hostage takers. so, this happens on both sides and happened with don jr.
america a america. any time someone criticizes the president, he wants to litigate. there s no parallel in modern american history of somebody who has tried to do this in a system attic way. it s incredible. jonathan turly, thank you. michael schmidt, brian clakloss well. i want to say this is why i want to circle back to what we were saying before when you had david brooks, a guy i respect, writing an op ed saying you guys, we re being too extreme in our attacks against donald trump. look at all the legislation. look at all the things that have passed. maybe we shouldn t be so silly and so instinctively anti-trump, but you just take what brian said. this is a guy that s trying to undermine one of the most basic
a quarter century, we have to get rid of the elect tractor-trailer college. it s a consequence of what s happening in our plex, polarization, a consequence of the partisan divide being layered over the divide between cities and rural areas and the more that being a democrat moons being in a city and vice-versa, the more we will see this junkture between the popular vote and the electoral college. coming up, the president wants to make it easier to sue people, who writes things that he doesn t like. no, he doesn t. this guy is unbelievable. this guy would be sued by so many people. if there were a lower standard or deaf messages. we ll talk to legal scholar jonathan turly who says there is little trump can do toaler our libel laws. that itself a good thing. morning joe is coming right back.
also was widely perceived as just being a prosecuter s prosecuter. a career prosecuter without a political ax to grind. of course, he played a key role in firing all of his colleagues early on in the trump administration. hard to know when all of this was going to go down. so great to have a conversation with both of you this morning. but i hate to do what ifs. what if it s this person or that person. we re going to need you to come back tomorrow when we know. having said that, jonathan, prognosticate as best you can, final thoughts this morning. well, all the money in washington has been on manafort. his attorneys have said they were not contacted about the indictment. usually if you have an indictment on a friday, you ll get word to the attorneys that you can surrender your client on monday. that doesn t mean it always happens, but his attorney said they weren t informed, and that s led to a lot of speculation. didn t i just remember hillary clinton meeting on a saturday with