Director Rob Reiner went on a tear on MSNBC tonight against a House Democrat opposed to impeachment, saying “we’ve got to stand up for democracy.”

Congressman Jefferson Van Drew (D- NJ) spoke with Chris Matthews tonight about his opposition to proceeding with an impeachment inquiry.

“Unless we find something new or unusual, something different that we didn’t see before, it seems that this just keeps continuing,” Van Drew said. “First it was going to be the Mueller report was really going to give us the information, and it did. I read it from the first page to the last page, and it gave some information. And certainly there are some distasteful sections and parts of that that really are concerning, but not high crimes and misdemeanors, at least in my opinion, and obviously in other people’s opinions as well.”

He said that there are many Americans who are concerned about issues that affect them like infrastructure, health care, and the cost of prescription drugs.

Reiner told Matthews in response, “I couldn’t disagree more with the congressman, because all of the issues that he talked about of course are critical. None of them will ever, ever pass when we don’t have the White House and ultimately the Senate. We passed a million bills already, and they lay dormant at Mitch McConnell’s feet. That’s not going to do anything.”

“That’s because we are so involved. We are so involved with this only, or at least the perception of this only,” Van Drew responded.

“No no no,” Reiner said.

“Look, I’m there every day. Let me just finish for a second,” Van Drew responded.

Matthews directly asked Van Drew if he thinks “seats like yours are in danger if the Democrats move toward impeachment.” The congressman said, “Absolutely… Folks have to realize it was middle Democrats, middle of the road Democrats, that created the majority. and that their voice counts too.”

Matthews argued that if Trump “gets away with this,” he gets a pass for saying he can “play ball with the Russians or any foreign adversary” and that as president he “can do anything he wants.”

Van Drew said that come election time they don’t want to tell people “we presided over a failed impeachment”:

“Now, if there is something real there, brand-new that comes up now… I don’t know why now the Russian issue all of the sudden became a bigger issue than it was a week ago, a month ago, six months ago, a year ago. It seems like we’re constantly trying to move on to do something else, and the bottom line is I want us to do good stuff, and we can. One of the reasons we’re not getting certain things done with the other side is because we’re always attacking them.”

Reiner shot back that he doesn’t know what the polling will be, arguing he could make a case it would be “great politics” for Democrats to hold Trump accountable:

“You need more to see? There were five hard examples of obstruction of justice laid out in the Mueller report. What else do you need? The guy’s working with the Russians. He says he’s going to continue working with the Russians. The Russians are already playing. We’ve seen the Senate Intelligence Committee tell us that they’re playing right now and they’re working hard to defeat us. Are we now saying that we’re just going to give ourselves over to the Russians? We beat them in the Cold War, and they’re beating us now in the cyber war. And if we don’t stand up to them, it could be the end of our democracy. And I’m sorry if you lose your seat, but we’ve got to stand up for democracy.”

Van Drew said, “We absolutely need to stand up to the Russians.”

You can watch above, via MSNBC.

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