On CNN Wednesday, criminal defense attorney Joey Jackson walked through why the Minneapolis police officer responsible for George Floyd's suffocation death must be prosecuted.

"Bottom line, question here from looking at this, should the officer face charges?" asked host Erin Burnett.

"Erin, I don't think there is any question about that, and I think if you look at it, under any reasonable measure there needs to be a prosecution," said Jackson. "You know, when you look at issues of excessive force — and I know this comes with a lot of emotion, and it should because of the blatant nature of what occurred. But if you even look at it legally and forget about the emotion, you look and you see, was there an imminent fear that the officer was facing when he had his knee in the neck of Mr. Floyd? And the answer is resoundingly no. You look at the force he used, that is the officer, and you say is it proportionate to whatever threat was posed? The answer is no, you don't see any threat. You see a person detained and really not resisting at all."

CNN's John King on Wednesday expressed shock that no one has been able to convince President Donald Trump to stop tweeting unfounded conspiracy theories about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough murdering a staffer 20 years ago.

During an interview with David Gergen, King said it was particularly jarring to see Trump, in the middle of a pandemic that has killed 100,000 Americans, to be tweeting things that "if I tweeted them, we would be fired in a snap."

Gergen then looked back at how past presidents have handled tragedies, and he said Trump pales in comparison to all of them.

"This should be a week of national mourning, to have 100,000 deaths, the number we'll reach in the next two or three days, and the country is saddened by that," he said. "Traditionally, presidents bring us together for occasions like this. They brought comfort, they met privately with the families of the victims and cheered people up... and here now, we have completely the opposite. It's very, very sad."