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Rachel Maddow laid out the blueprint on Thursday for how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could essentially stop Donald Trump‘s phony national emergency declaration before it even begins.

According to the MSNBC host, all Pelosi has to do is hold a vote to block Trump‘s declaration, which would trigger a Senate vote that is far from a shoo-in for the president.

“If Pelosi in the House passes a resolution blocking Trump from declaring this emergency … it would trigger a vote automatically in the Senate and once that vote was triggered in the Senate, honestly, it would only take a couple of Republicans voting with the Democratic senators to, in fact, block President Trump from declaring this emergency,” Maddow said.

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Maddow said:

So if Pelosi does this, if Pelosi in the House passes a resolution blocking Trump from declaring this emergency, once that vote happened, it would trigger a vote automatically in the Senate and once that vote was triggered in the Senate, honestly, it would only take a couple of Republicans voting with the Democratic senators to, in fact, block President Trump from declaring this emergency. That’s all it would take. And we all know from the public record, from the tape, from the receipts, that a lot more than just a couple Republican senators are on the record bluntly and unequivocally and recently saying that an emergency declaration from this president on this would be a terrible idea and they would be willing to fight him on it. Well, if they put their money where their mouth is, they could stop this president from doing it. And this is not hypothetical.

Enough Republicans are on the record opposing the resolution

While it’s mostly a pie in the sky idea to think that Republicans will ever adequately stand up to Donald Trump, on this issue – the emergency declaration – they may have boxed themselves in so badly that they can’t turn back.

In recent weeks, likely because they didn’t believe Trump would actually go forward with a fake national emergency, a handful of Republicans have said they oppose the move. They are on tape saying it’s a bad idea and that they would fight Trump on it.

Now that Trump is on the verge of declaring the national emergency, all Nancy Pelosi has to do is trigger a vote that would force Republicans in the Senate to put their money where their mouths are.

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