MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace said Wednesday that Republicans who are standing with former President Donald Trump “on inciting an insurrection” are “burning the party to the ground.”
In her broadcast of “Deadline: White House” Wallace praised MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s “epic” Wednesday morning rant on “Republican inaction” concerning Trump’s actions, before quoting a Department of Homeland Security bulletin on a potential domestic terror threat. (RELATED: ‘Mike Pence Is In Fear For His Life’: Joe Scarborough Blames Trump For People Putting Former Vice President ‘On Their Hit Lists’)
“My colleague Joe Scarborough went on an epic rant against Republican inaction and I admired it so much….but I have a totally different view on this. Republicans who want to stand with Donald Trump on inciting an insurrection, knock yourself out. You’ll make the job of burning the party to the ground faster and easier,” Wallace said. “Let me read this bulletin one more time….ideologically motivated, violent extremists with objections to the exercise of government authority and the presidential transition. It’s Donald Trump’s freaking mission statement for the last three months of his presidency. He is the clear and present danger.”
Trump cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election by blaming his loss to President Joe Biden on massive voter fraud. These claims culminated in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by a mob of Trump’s supporters seeking to stop the certification of the Electoral College results. Trump was subsequently impeached on Jan. 13 after being accused of inciting the mob.
MSNBC senior political analyst Ashley Parker responded to Wallace, saying she felt the Capitol attack was a “natural, logical culmination of Trumpism” because of the “violence” she saw at Trump’s rallies when he first ran for president in 2015.
“He was not even president. He was a candidate. I was out on the campaign trail covering him…..I called my editors and said we need a reporter at every single Trump event, because pretty soon things are going to get violent and we’re going to want to have someone there on the ground to cover it,” Parker said. “This is something that the president — of course, as you mentioned, he egged on those angry reporters on January 6th, but he’s been egging them on since he even took power, and now we’re seeing the continuation of it in members of the Republican party.”