Watch: Uncomfortable Moment MSNBC Shill Had to Be Corrected About the Constitution On-Air
Some of the hosts on MSNBC had an awkward moment on Sunday after Michael Steele wrongly insisted that the Constitution allows for presidential inaugurations to be held in March.
The tense moment on “The Weekend,” which came one day before the inauguration of President Donald Trump, saw Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland and former chair of the Republican National Committee, wonder aloud why inaugurations are hosted in January given the frigid temperatures seen this year.
“Well, there’s still the value of moving the inauguration back to March,” he said, according to Mediaite.
“I don’t know why they ever moved to January in the first place, but here we are.”
At that point, colleague Symone Sanders-Townsend raised an eyebrow and was visibly confused.
“The Constitution,” she replied simply.
“What was that?” Steele asked. “The Constitution,” Sanders-Townsend insisted.
But Steele doubled down on his remarks.
“No, the inauguration was held in March right up through Roosevelt,” he said. “And then they changed it. It ain’t in the Constitution.”
Sanders-Townsend laughed knowingly as Steele narrated the introduction for the next segment.
Despite Steele’s insistence to the contrary, Sanders-Townsend was correct.
Sanders-Townsend, the former chief spokeswoman and senior adviser to now-former Vice President Kamala Harris, rightly seems to have known that the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution mandates that presidential inaugurations be held at noon on Jan. 20 in the year after general elections.
Steele, to his credit, was correct in that presidents through Franklin D. Roosevelt were previously inaugurated on March 4, and instead entered office on March 5 when that day fell on a Sunday.
Roosevelt was the first commander-in-chief to be sworn into office in January. That was the second of his four inaugurations.
The Library of Congress noted that “a basic pattern of activities has been established over the years” for presidential inaugurations.
“Around noon, the president is sworn in at the Capitol by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court,” a webpage for the Library of Congress described.
“After taking the brief, 35-word oath of office, the new chief executive delivers an inaugural address, followed by a parade through the city, and an evening of gala festivities.”
Those inaugural celebrations have “run the gamut from Andrew Jackson’s raucous White House reception in 1829, to FDR’s somber wartime affair in 1945.”
The Trump inauguration was a bit abnormal, with the oaths and inaugural address occurring inside the Capitol Rotunda rather than outdoors in the view of the National Mall.
In any case, what remains clear is that Steele should brush up on his facts, and maybe check his ego a bit along the way.
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