MSNBC panel shreds Trump for palling around with 'con men and grifters' like Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi

MSNBC's Mike Barnicle said conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi incriminated himself in a television interview where he denied participating in the Russian collusion scheme to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.

The so-called "birther king" and former Washington bureau chief for InfoWars admits to coordinating with right-wing trickster Roger Stone to publicize stolen emails through WikiLeaks, but he insists he did nothing wrong.

"Corsi told me he assumed that Stone would have passed that information on, he doesn't think that's illegal," said NBC News reporter Anna Schecter, who interviewed the Trump associate. "He would have hoped he passed that information on. Stone, of course, says he had no advanced knowledge of exactly what WikiLeaks was going to do, that he did learn things from (radio host) Randy Credico, that he did not collude in any way, and his lawyers told me he's not worried about this part of it."

Barnicle, an MSNBC political analyst and longtime columnist, said Corsi's defense was laughably thin.

"There's a couple of things to take from Anna's interview with Corsi," he said. "First of all, the baseline on Corsi is he is a guy who believes the moon landing was staged, that it was faked, okay?"

"The second thing is, he's been around for years, as Anna alluded to, he was behind the swift-boating episodes with John Kerry," Barnicle continued. "Off of this interview, you could indict him as soon as the lights went off on the interview, that's how limited the guy really is. The guy is totally irrational."

Barnicle said Corsi's character was also an indictment of Trump's judgment.

"The important point is, he, Roger Stone and others are the kinds of people around Donald Trump," Barnicle said. "That's the most important point, I think."

Former Republican strategist Rick Tyler agreed.

"I think that's an important point," Tyler said. "Let's not forget, these are con men and grifters."