Rachel Maddow is Being So Unfair to Donald Trump, You Guys!

In part fifty-eight of our eleventy-billion part series “What the Hell, MSNBC?”, Tuesday night’s primary election coverage featured a weird spat between liberal primetime star Rachel Maddow and failed Sarah Palin sherpa-turned-face-of-MSNBC Nicolle Wallace over their dueling poor analyses of Donald Trump‘s victory speech. Maddow was wondering where that old Trump magic had gone while he was busy staying “on-message,” which triggered a weird protective streak in Wallace:

Wallace: But we don’t expect anyone else to only be one thing. So Trump has to be screaming racist at the top of his lungs to be exciting? That’s not a fair or objective analysis of what Trump needs to accomplish.

Maddow: I’m unfair?

Wallace: It’s not an objective analysis to say unless Trump is oozing charisma and spontaneity, he’s not a good candidate.

At least they made up in the end, with Wallace calling back to another Election Night gag in which Maddow bought her the domain name LoseWithCruz2016.com.

Maddow’s observation that Trump loses some energy when he goes on the Teleprompter is perfectly fine, but she gives Trump too much credit for being “on message,” and they both fell into the same trap as the rest of the political media by entertaining the premise that Donald Trump can simply shed overt racism by behaving himself from now on. If Donald Trump wins, it won’t be because people forget the racism, it will be because they either like it, or just don’t mind it as much as they mind Hillary Clinton.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.