'Nonsensical defense': MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan tears apart Republican 'lies' about Mar-a-Lago search

When FBI agents conducted a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, August 8, it didn’t take long for former President Donald Trump’s allies — from Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to far-right pundits at Fox News and Newsmax — to leap to his defense. Even when the Washington Post reported, on August 11, that FBI agents were searching for “classified documents relating to nuclear weapons,” Trump’s supporters continued to defend him vigorously.

MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan lambasted Trump and his “apologists” during a blistering commentary on Sunday night, August 14, accusing them of pushing outright “lies” about the FBI search.

“The lies we have seen over the past week from the former president himself and from his political and media apologists about classified documents, FBI searches, nuclear secrets, Barack Obama and more, have been a sight to behold,” the progressive firebrand told viewers.

Trump has blamed the FBI search on “radical left Democrats.” But Hasan counters, “Democrats had nothing to do with it. The FBI executed the search warrant, and the FBI are not Democrats. If anything, like most law enforcement agencies, they lean to the right. The director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, is a lifelong Republican, appointed by a Republican president. Wray has impeccable credentials.”

Hasan went to slam pro-Trump Republicans, including Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Fox News’ Jesse Watters, for claiming that the FBI agents planted false evidence at Mar-a-Lago during the August 8 search.

“To be clear, there is, of course, zero evidence the FBI planted evidence,” Hasan told viewers. “But they didn’t just go after the FBI. They went after the Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who signed off on the search warrant, casting him as an Obama donor. Actually, the judge is also a former donor to former Republican governor and son and brother of a former Republican governor and president, Jeb Bush. And as CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski reported, the judge is also a regular guest on that well-known ‘liberal’ cable channel Newsmax…. The lies and evasions kept coming all week long.”

According to Hasan, the pro-Trump “lies” pushed by his “apologists” have contradicted one another.

“At one point this week,” Hasan told views, “Trump and Co. were telling so many lies that the lies started to just blatantly and hilariously contradict each other. The documents were planted, they said. But then, they also said that Trump declassified the documents. He declassified documents that were planted…. Then came the next nonsensical defense from Trumpworld.”

The “nonsensical defense,” Hasan noted, is that Trump simply took documents home to work on them after he declassified them.

“It is just not true to claim that the president can declassify whatever he likes. Nope,” Hasan explained.

Watch the video below: