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Former Vice President Mike Pence blasted Donald Trump after his former running mate said that people who committed crimes on Jan. 6 were "hostages" to the legal system.

During an interview on CBS's Face the Nation program on Sunday, host Margaret Brennan asked Pence if he agreed with Trump when he referred to the Jan. 6 criminals as "hostages and patriots" at a recent rally.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) let out an audible sigh on Sunday when he was asked whether Donald Trump would follow the U.S. Constitution if he is elected for a second term.

During a Sunday interview on NBC, host Kristen Welker noted that Trump had vowed to release people convicted of crimes for the attacks on Jan. 6, 2021.

Pushback from Donald Trump's campaign that his inflammatory "bloodbath" comments at a Saturday Ohio rally were limited to his talking about what would happen to the auto industry if he is not re-elected fell on deaf ears on MSNBC on Sunday morning.

The former president set off a firestorm late Saturday after a clip of him stating, "Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole – that’s gonna be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it," was posted to social media that did not include the context.

However, as Mother Jones editor and political analyst David Corn explained, the former president's use of "bloodbath" was intentional well beyond being directed at autoworkers in industrial Ohio,

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MSNBC "The Weekend" co-host Symone Sanders-Townsend kicked off the discussion by prompting Corn, "Look, Donald Trump's campaign says he was talking about an economic bloodbath — I don't know if I buy that — but that is in fact what the campaign said."

" Trump has always done this," Corn shot back. "We've been watching the show for over eight years now and others like myself have covered him for years and have seen it even longer. He uses these high-impact words that have either the direct or implicit tone of violence."

"January 6th, come down, it's going to be wild. Go to the Capitol and fight like hell'" he recalled Trump stating. "He says these things over and over again and he has actually used explicit violent language and telling his own people at rallies to beat the you know what out of protesters at these rallies."

"At this point in the game, trying to parse a word like bloodbath strikes me as being entirely absurd," he added. "In the same speech, he calls hundreds who beat up cops, unbelievable patriots. When he says the word bloodbath, he knows what he's doing, whether he means an economic bloodbath or something else in the same speech. He is endorsing political violence and when he says he'll never have another election if I don't win, well, that too, has a tone of violence to it as well."


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Fox News on Sunday introduced Christian prayers that were sponsored by a Bible app.

"We have more Fox and Friends coming up, but you know what this is a transition for transitions if you've ever had one so so so Fox and Friends, this is very Fox and Friends, so ready your heart," Fox News host Pete Hegseth said on Sunday, segueing from a rant against TikTok.

Appearing with MSNBC host Katie Phang on Saturday afternoon, former Donald Trump lawyer and "fixer" Michael Cohen claimed his former client is struggling to raise the cash he needs after losing a half-billion dollar judgment in Judge Arthur Engoron's courtroom.

Worse still, he stated, the former president doesn't want New York Attorney General Letitia James pouncing on him if he doesn't meet his bond deadline.

Asked, "Your thoughts about what Donald Trump is doing in order to secure that very large bond," he replied, "Donald Trump will do anything within which to ensure the bond gets obtained and the bond gets posted."

"This is a real problem for him," he elaborated. "He had a hard enough time getting the $91 million [for E. Jean Carroll], which again, I can't understand how a publicly traded company like Federated, which is Chubb Insurance, was able to justify making to a guy that does not pay his bills, that's something we all know for sure."

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"But rest assured of something else," he added, "The last person that Donald Trump right now wants to scrap with is our unsinkable Attorney General Tish James. She already knows what is going to happen come the day the bond is not filed. She will start seizing the assets, there is going to a major sale of these assets."

"One of the things that I talk about quite often is that people do not realize just because you sell the asset does not mean the full sale price goes to, let's say Donald Trump or Letitia James in order to offset the amount of the $500 plus million bond with $110,000 a day of accruing interest," he explained. "There are taxable consequences that take place on these assets as well because his basis is substantially low."

"On top of that, many of these assets are also encumbered with mortgages. It is not as if 100 cents on the dollar will go toward paying off that $500 million obligation," he stated.

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During an appearance on MSNBC on Saturday morning, a senior adviser to Attorney General Merrick Garland claimed he had high hopes for special counsel Robert Hur when he was chosen to investigate President Joe Biden and now admits it was a terrible mistake.

Speaking with the hosts on MSNBC's "The Weekend," ex-DOJ official Anthony Coley said the attorney general goofed by selecting Hur who appears to be auditioning for a job in a future Trump administration.

As he told the hosts, "I was at the Justice Department at the time of this appointment. I talked to Robert Hur myself as head of the Office of Human Affairs and we all had high hopes that Robert Hur would do what he was assigned to do and that is to call the balls and strikes as they are and to be apolitical."

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"In retrospect, and I say this as somebody who has a great deal of respect for the attorney general, in retrospect, the attorney general made the wrong choice in selecting Robert Hur to be the special counsel," he continued. "I think he should have, Garland should have appointed a special counsel who was perhaps at the end of a distinguished legal career and not someone who was midcareer Robert Hur in his early 50s."

"In my opinion, he wrote a report that was designed to safeguard his employment in a future Republican administration."

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During an appearance on MSNBC's "The Weekend," a former senior adviser to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland wasn't shy about accusing U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon of running interference for Donald Trump who is facing felony obstruction of justice charges related to stolen documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago.

Former prosecutor Anthony Coley agreed with MSNBC co-host Michael Steele that Cannon has no intention of letting the Trump charges see the light of day in her courtroom, adding that she is acting like a "fixer."

"I have some real issues with this judge in this case," host Steele began. "I want to call your attention to Politico reporting that at the end of Thursday's session Cannon promised to 'rule promptly but made no mention of the schedule for a trial and how close she is to resolving a wide array of other legal issues raised by the case or even when other defense motions may be argued.'"

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"My truth is this: she don't want to move this thing along because this pace helps Trump," he accused. "I know that is a terrible thing to say but I am looking objectively at the process here and particularly how I feel in so many ways that she has found a way to put her finger on the scale, as opposed to sitting back as an arbiter of facts and the process and saying, 'Let's keep this going people.''

"I agree with you 1000 percent," Coley quickly replied. "I think the motion was necessary and the hearing was necessary."

"One of the things I know from my time at the DOJ and [MSNBC host] Katie Phang knows this as well, is that the government wins upwards of 95 percent of these types of cases. Cases that deal with retention, unauthorized retention, of classified documents and the judge knows this."

"So she is trying, to your point, to prevent the trial from even starting," he added, "I think she is trying to fix the fight before the fight gets started."

"The thing about the case is that the evidence is overwhelming and it includes videotape from Mar-a-Lago and it includes photographic evidence and importantly, it includes a first-hand witness account," he pointed out.

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Donald Trump's taking control of the Republican National Committee is not going over well with Republican leadership at the state level who fear they will be left out in the cold with the RNC becoming a defacto arm of his re-election bid.

According to former RNC chair Michael Steele, the only thing stopping a revolt at the state level is the fear of Trump's hardcore MAGA loyalists.

During an explanation of how the RNC works on MSNBC's "The Weekend," Steele first added the caveat that when he took over the committee he also fired everyone but it also wasn't a mere seven months before a crucial election.

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Having said that, he noted that the RNC's usual function is to work on the eight key battleground states that can swing an election.

Now, he stated, help may not be on the way because the RNC may be funneling scarce cash to pay for the former president's myriad legal problems.

He then added that he was hearing grumbling from his former associates heading up their respective state Republican parties.

"I have talked to a number of former and current state party chairs and they are not happy," he told his co-hosts. "They will put on the face because they don't want to get the blowback from the MAGA nuts inside the party. But the reality is that they are not happy."

"They know what this means," he continued. "People that have been in the process of building up and putting in place players who are going to actually execute on a plan, 'Oh, I guess there is one,' but Lara Trump is now in charge."

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The hosts of MSNBC's "The Weekend" had a good laugh on Saturday morning as Atlantic reporter McKay Coppins described the dysfunction of the House Republican caucus that is now reeling as their attempt to impeach President Joe Biden is dying a slow death.

With Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) no longer interested in putting impeachment to a vote in the House, Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY) plans instead to make criminal referrals to the DOJ which are also expected to go nowhere.

Asked how House Republicans are dealing with the months of hearings that have fallen apart, Coppins stated that their mood is dark and getting darker.

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Reacting to a letter the White House sent to Johnson essentially taunting the failure of the investigation, Coppins explained, " I think the White House smelled blood in the water, right? They saw Republicans were losing their will to continue with this."

"I mean, you talk to Republicans on the Hill and they know that this is over, right?" he continued. "A lot of them knew it was a farce from the beginning but they were going along and saying what we can we dredge up? It was a fishing expedition on how to hurt President Biden during an election year but their star witness has fallen apart."

"To say the least," a laughing Symone Sanders-Townsend interjected.

"The impeachment has fallen apart in pretty embarrassing fashion," Coppins added. "That's why you see people like Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) just kind of completely demoralized. By all accounts, the [GOP] House conference was especially demoralized and embarrassed. You see Republicans wanting to retire and leave. I think the White House saw that."

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