Madeleine Carter’s new MSNBC documentary Love and the Constitution follows Congressman Jamie Raskin over three years of his political and personal life, through the darkest days of the Trump administration to the fateful events of Jan. 6, 2021, and beyond.
But when Carter approached Raskin, who serves as the U.S. Representative for Maryland’s 8th congressional district, about making a documentary, it wasn’t the first time they’d met. Carter and Raskin had actually become friends decades earlier while they were attending Harvard as undergrads.
“I actually have known Jamie Raskin since he was 16. We actually met in college. Weirdly, freshman year he was my roommates’ boyfriend, so I spent a lot of time with him freshman year, and then we kind of lost track of each other. And then he ended up becoming my congressman,” Carter told MovieMaker. “About a year into his being my congressman, I reached out to him and I said I really wanted to make a documentary about him.”
It took some convincing to get Raskin and his wife, Sarah Bloom Raskin, on board, but Carter knew she was on to something. Raskin was on the House Judiciary Committee, and in anticipation of the publication of the Mueller Report, Carter thought he would have a unique viewpoint into Trump’s upcoming impeachment proceedings. Little did she know that while shooting while filming Love and the Constitution, she’d get a front-row seat to not just one, but two Trump impeachments — and to the Jan. 6 insurrection on the Capitol.
“I thought the Mueller Report was going to come out at any minute,” she said. “I thought the moment that came out, the Trump impeachment would happen, and that would all be done by the House Judiciary Committee, which [Raskin] sits on, so that I would have like a front-row seat through Jamie to Trump’s impeachment and I thought the whole thing would be over within a year. And then of course, things did not turn out that way.”
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“Amazing events kept happening and I kept not having an ending, so I just kept filming and filming and filming,” she said.
Some tragic events happened while Carter was filming Raskin’s life, too. His son, Tommy Bloom Raskin, committed suicide on Dec. 31, 2020.
Although Carter sometimes felt guilty following Raskin and his family around with a camera, she knew that both the good and the bad needed to be in the documentary.
“It was some very tough, emotional times right after Tommy died and during Tommy’s memorial service, and so there were just situations where I felt extremely uncomfortable being a documentarian, but I just had to — I had to do it because that was my job,” Carter said.
But although the documentary includes some dark and sad times, it’s got some hopeful ones, too.
“Finally, my ending — all these awful things happened, including Jamie’s son committing suicide and including the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, followed by a positive thing, which was that Jamie was named lead impeachment manager for the second impeachment,” she said.
Love and the Constitution premieres on MSNBC on Sunday, Feb 6th at 10 p.m. ET.
Main Image: U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin in Love and the Constitution — Photo Credit MSNBC.
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