President Donald Trump and/or his attorneys have been invited to the House impeachment hearings after Thanksgiving if he wants to participate, according to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY). However, an MSNBC panel doesn't expect Trump will show.
The White House has responded to Nadler's letter by saying that they'll review it. Host Geoff Bennett wondered who the White House would even send if they were asking a lawyer to attend.
"I would love for it to be Rudy Giuliani. Let's just finish this movie that they have all started," joked Axios reporter Alexi McCammond.
She went on to say that Trump couldn't even be bothered to respond to special counsel Robert Mueller in person, he had to have his lawyers fill out the "take-home" questions.
"What Trump thrives on and succeeds on is being as ambiguous as possible and throwing out generalizations without tieing himself down to any facts as to avoid perjuring himself," she went on. "I would imagine he feels he has no advantage to actually sitting down, and he's just going to keep throwing out these allegations that it's BS, and they're all out to get him."
Los Angeles Times reporter Eli Stokols agreed, saying that Trump is avoiding being caught in a contradiction.
"Saying that you want to cooperate, that you want to have a seat at the impeachment table -- those are just things you say," Stokols said. "They are not things that the White House actually plans on following through on. And they are just unabashed -- the president is unabashed about not caring. If somebody says to him, 'You said this yesterday,' he just bulldozes right past it, you know, to the point that Ashley [Parker] was making about he's just trying to get through moment to moment."
Former Democratic Party adviser Doug Thornell explained that it's easier for Trump to fire off cheap shots from Twitter instead of showing up and actually doing something.
"He and his team and Republicans have not come up with a defense for what he did, which we know based off of the facts have not been contested," Thornell said. "There is no one out there saying that he didn't say what he said to Zelensky who -- he obviously held up the aid. There is enough evidence out there to make this solid case for impeachment. All Republicans have been able to use is basically, you know, 'this is a witch hunt!' 'This is democrats out for him!' The last thing they were hanging onto was this notion that, well, he released the aid, so there's nothing wrong with that. We know that's nonsense now."
Watch the full discussion below: