CNN’s Chris Wallace and Don Lemon Despair at Trump Run Amid GOP Reaction to Pelosi Attack: ‘Meanness a Plus Not a Minus’

CNN anchors Don Lemon and Chris Wallace talked about former President Donald Trump’s formal reentry into politics in the context of the attack on Paul Pelosi, in which the attacker reportedly also wanted to target Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Several news outlets reported on Friday that Trumpworld is floating a mid-November announcement of a presidential run.

On Friday morning’s edition of CNN This Morning, Lemon and co-anchors Kaitlan Collins and Poppy Harlow talked with Wallace about the prospect of a November announcement — before the scoops — and Lemon asked whether people are “ready” for Trump’s “divisiveness.”

Wallace said he wished it were not so, but referenced Republicans  joking and lying about the Pelosi attack as evidence that such behavior is “a plus, not a minus” for the GOP base:

DON LEMON: This is where we agree, because I felt the same as you. I wasn’t so sure Chris said that Donald Trump was going to run again. In fact, I thought the evidence was that he’s not going to do it. He was just — he wants to be a kingmaker instead of King. And I think a lot depends on what happens on Tuesday night. If Republicans do really well. As you said, he’s going to want to take credit for it and then he’ll say, I’m running because they will think his chances are good. But what you have to look at, the, we call, lack of civility and not the politics have ever been that civil. But when you look at what is happening with the former president does, what he says on social media, how divisive he is, are voters, do they want that again? Are they in for that ride again?

CHRIS WALLACE: Well, you know, it’s interesting because you’d like to say no. You’d like to say that we still are a nation of civility as a nation of compassion and good manners. But, you know, I think back down to 2015 when Donald Trump in Iowa made some jokes about John McCain and said, you know, I like war heroes who haven’t been caught. And an awful lot of us, myself included, thought that’s it, he’s never going to survive that. And as we saw, he was able to survive that and much worse. And what’s been so fascinating about the reaction to the horrific attack on Paul Pelosi is the number of other Republicans who have leaned in on that and made jokes about it, whether it’s Kari Lake or Glenn Youngkin and on and on. And it almost seems like to the Trump base, to the MAGA base, that kind of political incorrectness, that kind of lack of civility, some could say even meanness, seems to be a plus, not a minus. So I don’t I don’t see any indication that for a certain element of American politics, that’s going away anytime soon.

KAITLAN COLLINS:: Because they don’t view it as meanness. They view it as him being a fighter.

CHRIS WALLACE: Yeah.

DONALD TRUMP: But he was an unknown quantity then, so to speak, politically. Now he is. And so we’ll see.

KAITLAN COLLINS:: We don’t know what it would look like.

Watch above via CNN This Morning.