CNN and MSNBC both used a deceptively-edited video clip to misquote President Donald Trump talking about Article II of the Constitution in July — the same misquote used by Democrats in the House Judiciary Committee this week.
As Breitbart News noted Friday, Democrats played a clip at Wednesday’s impeachment hearing, showing President Trump saying, “Then I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”
Democrat counsel Norm Eisen asked Democrat witness Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School to react to that clip. Feldman said that “as someone who cares about the Constitution,” Trump’s words “struck a kind of horror in me.”
Later, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) repeated the misquote, claiming that President Trump “believes that in his own words, ‘I can do whatever I want.’”
However, the video had been deceptively edited to omit the full quote and the context: President Trump was talking about his power to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, not in general.
As Breitbart News’ Charlie Spiering noted Friday, Trump made a similar statement on ABC News in June, saying that under Article II, he had the power to fire Mueller — though he had not done so:
Look, Article II, I would be allowed to fire Robert Mueller. Assuming I did all of the things, I said I want to fire him. Number one, I didn’t. He wasn’t fired. Number one, very importantly but more importantly, Article II allows me to do whatever I want. Article II would allow me to fire him. I wasn’t going to fire him. You know why — because I watched Richard Nixon firing everybody and that didn’t work out too well. – READ MORE