GOP lawmakers need to realize 'things are going to get a lot worse' for Trump when impeachment is televised: conservative

On MSNBC Saturday, conservative editor and commentator Charlie Sykes deconstructed the GOP's process complaints on impeachment — and warned that it is blowing up in their faces.

"On the scale of one to ten, one being actual substance, where would you rank what we just witnessed there and these arguments that these congressmen were making?" asked host Ayman Mohyeldin.

"Oh, I would put this at an 11," said Sykes. "This was street theater. This was the Republican Party channeling its inner Code Pink. It's like being in a — playing chess, and you realized you've just been checkmated and you throw the board over. You try to turn the whole thing into a farce. And this is clearly what they're trying to do, that they — as the defenses crumble, they need to talk about the process, and to the extent that it is a darker and darker picture for the president, what they're trying to do is they're trying to turn it into a circus. But I think it backfired on them."

"This is where the Republicans are at right now. They have to talk about the legitimacy of the process, focusing on that vote," said Sykes. "That's a fig leaf that's going to be torn away very, very soon ... Republicans in the Senate have to realize that things are going to get a lot worse in terms of the evidence, in terms of the venue that's going to be televised trial, in terms of the president's behavior, and they're not going to be able to hide behind these questions about when does the house have a vote, public hearing, private hearings, that process issue will be resolved at some point politically, so at some point they're going to have to confront the substance, and the substance of this is a president who has abused his power and sold out the country."