On Wednesday’s Hardball, MSNBC contributor and PBS NewsHour correspondent Yamiche Alcindor suggested that the President’s reaction to the Mueller report is a sign of how authoritarian regimes come to power and questioned the intelligence of anyone who watched (or, by extension, reads this) that a reelected President Trump in 2020 would cast doubt on whether Americans understand the Constitution.

So, to be clear, a journalist who’s salary is paid for by you, the American taxpayer, has concerns about your intelligence if Trump is reelected in 2020. Add this to the list of reasons to defund PBS.

Alcindor’s comments came at the end of the A-block reacting to the House Judiciary Committee holding Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt of Congress for his refusal to submit requested documents and testify before their committee with Members giving way some of their questioning to staff lawyers.

She fretted that she hasn’t seen any “sort of action from Republicans” and then pivoted to 2020, suggesting that the election will “be resolving a lot of this.”

And how would that be? Well, Alcindor ruled that “[i]f the President can get re-elected while doing all of this, that’s when you really have to ask yourself about the Americans and their understanding of the Constitution because then, it says that there is a precedent set that any Republican and any Democratic president can do this and keep their job.”

Fellow guests Joyce Vance and Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) didn’t object and neither did host Chris Matthews, who replied:

Well people have been — because of all kinds of tribal alliances, I’ve noticed that every community will re-elect the guy who’s one of theirs even if they're crooks and we’ve never apply that to the President of the United States before, and God help us, we hope never will.

So, yes, we once again had a Gruber-like situation where the elites in Washington bemoaned how the rest of the country might disagree with them and thus, in their view, do the opposite of what’s good for them.

Moments earlier, Alcindor had strayed into Notable Quotable territory. After Vance defended her former boss Eric Holder’s actions regarding Fast & Furious that led to him being held in contempt of Congress, Alcindor and Matthews suggested America’s becoming a “tin pot crazy country” a la Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela (click “expand”):

MATTHEWS: And I just think the closer we — everyday is, look, we’re going to a tin pot crazy country where there’s no history of democracy. I don’t want to knock any other country because we’re better. We’ve been doing this since the late 18th century and yet it sounds like we haven’t been doing it or acting now like we haven’t had 250 something years of getting regular election every two years. (....) ALCINDOR: [B]ut I should tell you, Chris, I’ve talked to people that are from Venezuela, from Haiti, they say, look at this very carefully. This is how authoritarian governments start. They start by the fact that, first, he was talking about jailing his opponents. Now, he’s talking about the idea that he doesn’t have to answer to Congress. So there are people, mostly Democrats, who are from authoritarian governments who are sounding the alarm saying, America really needs to watch out. MATTHEWS: Yeah, people that come from, well, Cuba, places like that, you know, Venezuela.

Also in this segment, Vance suggested that just because “Bob Mueller may not have found evidence that was sufficient to prove a conspiracy between campaign and the Russian government,” that doesn’t meant there wasn’t collusion or that the President wasn’t compromised by the Russians.

Is there a prescription out there for those suffering from collusion delusion? Because Vance and her colleagues sure could use it.

To see the relevant transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on May 8, click “expand.”