We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

MSNBC weekend host and legal contributor Katie Phang joined colleague Joy Reid on Friday’s installment of The ReidOut to declare that “the arc of justice has been crushed” now that Donald Trump will not be getting the hefty sentence on January 10 that progressives like them were hoping for in the New York hush money case.

Reid kicked things off with an unrelated matter: Judge Juan Merchan not buying Trump’s argument that the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling is relevant to the case, “Katie my friend, I want to go to one of the parts of this decision that I found the most fascinating, the most interesting. Judge Merchan wrote a really fascinating decision, talk to us about this apparently made-up concept called presidential-elect immunity and how that got knocked down.”

Phang began by applauding Merchan’s ruling and attacking the “horrible SCOTUS opinion,” but she eventually pivoted to the sentencing:

Remember, this was the falsification of business records and this happened before Donald Trump went into the Oval Office, but, Joy, even though this is a meticulous opinion, as you note, and I give Judge Merchan his flowers whenever they are due, I want to say, I am angry, and if anyone’s watching this right now is angry, you’re allowed to be angry, but you’re not angry at Judge Merchan.

Merchan does not want to throw the incoming president in jail for various reasons, not the least of which is practicality, so Phang was left to find other people to be angry at and naturally settled on the Supreme Court and Trump himself:

Be angry appropriately and lay the blame at the feet of Donald Trump, the Supreme Court of the United States, because the arc of justice has been crushed and flattened by the weight of the Oval Office, not because of the dignity or integrity of that office, but the deceit by which Donald Trump made it back into that Oval Office.

That makes no sense. Love it or hate it, the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling had no impact on the election. The Court didn’t force voters to pick Trump over Kamala Harris, nor does not liking the way Trump campaigned have anything to do with anything. Phang’s preferred candidate just lost, and it really is that simple.

Nevertheless, Phang continued ranting:

This is why people, angry by this outcome, should say, ‘There is no true justice anymore,’ because you and I both know that if this was someone else, Joy, this outcome would have been different. There would have been a sentence held in advance, there would have been something had teeth to it, but this is also spitting in the face of jurors that sat for more than seven weeks, the original grand jurors that return an indictment, and then the jurors that sat seven weeks and listened to the evidence and rendered a verdict of guilty.

And what would Phang’s alternative be? Put the president in jail? Or is she just venting to an echo chamber that is still having trouble processing they lost to Donald Trump, again, even with all his legal controversies?

Here is a transcript for the January 3 show:

MSNBC The ReidOut

1/3/2025

7:04 PM ET

JOY REID: Katie my friend, I want to go to one of the parts of this decision that I found the most fascinating, the most interesting. Judge Merchan wrote a really fascinating decision, talk to us about this apparently made-up concept called presidential-elect immunity and how that got knocked down.

KATIE PHANG: Yeah, and even Denver’s having a chuckle at that too, because Donald Trump was trying to abuse the horrible SCOTUS opinion that came out that provided him with presidential immunity by trying to distort it to create a brand new avenue of immunity called President-elect immunity, but Judge Merchan made quick and swift dispatch with the idea that Trump has this version of President-elect immunity and it also threads the needle carefully, I think, for appellate purposes, Joy, because it makes clear that the action of a president when they are not sitting in the Oval Office does not afford him immunity that covers the bases for the conduct that was criminal in this instance. 

Remember, this was the falsification of business records and this happened before Donald Trump went into the Oval Office, but, Joy, even though this is a meticulous opinion, as you note, and I give Judge Merchan his flowers whenever they are due, I want to say, I am angry, and if anyone’s watching this right now is angry, you’re allowed to be angry, but you’re not angry at Judge Merchan.

Be angry appropriately and lay the blame at the feet of Donald Trump, the Supreme Court of the United States, because the arc of justice has been crushed and flattened by the weight of the Oval Office, not because of the dignity or integrity of that office, but the deceit by which Donald Trump made it back into that Oval Office.

And this is why people, angry by this outcome, should say, “There is no true justice anymore,” because you and I both know that if this was someone else, Joy, this outcome would have been different. There would have been a sentence held in advance, there would have been something had teeth to it, but this is also spitting in the face of jurors that sat for more than seven weeks, the original grand jurors that return an indictment, and then the jurors that sat seven weeks and listened to the evidence and rendered a verdict of guilty.