‘Is He Out of Control? Is He Triggered?’ Nicolle Wallace Goes Off on Trump’s Bizarre Twitter Rants and Conspiracy Theories

Reed RichardsonMay 26th, 2020, 5:15 pm
 

Deadline: White House host Nicolle Wallace surveyed the bizarre and increasingly paranoid attacks President Donald Trump is unleashing on his political enemies — real and perceived — via Twitter, and asked: “Is he unstoppable? Is he out of control? Is he triggered?”

During her Tuesday afternoon show, the MSNBC host discussed with Axios White House correspondent Jonathan Swan the unhinged nature of the president’s social media presence of late, culminating in a Memorial Day weekend where retweeted childish insults of numerous Democratic politicians, insulted and lied about a Marine reservist Congressman as an “American fraud,” and mocked his 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, for following his own Surgeon General’s advice.

Reciting some of the most extreme past examples of Trump’s personal attacks spilling over into insulting innocent families, Wallace pivoted to talking about the president’s targeting of MSNBC Morning Joe host and political foil Joe Scarborough.

“This is about a personal obsession, a maniacal obsession and the use of a family who’s grieving,” Wallace explained, alluding to the near-universal condemnation Trump has earned for repeatedly dredging up a vicious conspiracy theory that implies Scarborough was somehow responsible for the death of his former aide nearly two decades ago. Trump continued to push this debunked claim even after the woman’s widower, Timothy Klausutis, begged Twitter to take down the completely false posts. On Tuesday, Twitter even took the extraordinary step of apologizing for Trump’s abhorrent comments, but still refused to accede to his wishes and take down the offending posts.

That statement from the social media giant came in the wake of yet another round of Trump tweets about the conspiracy theory Tuesday morning.

Noting that the deceased woman’s family is not “getting hit in the crossfire” of Trump’s political feud with Scarborough, Wallace asked Swan about the behind-the-scenes White House take on the president’s surreal claims.

“What’s notably abou this episode is, you know, you’re not seeing the usual Trump sycophants online defending him,” Swan noted. “If you do a cursory review of the usual suspects who are on Twitter, the keyboard warriors, they’re not sing this is a winning issue, it’s mostly silence and to the extent you have conservative voices who are — who usually give Trump the benefit of the doubt, they’re being quite critical, Ben Shapiro, very conservative commentator, he’s very critical of the president on this. David Brody , who has a huge following among evangelical Christians, called on the president to stop it. To a person, they’re all making the same point, which is, this is a family that’s suffering.”

“What can I tell from my own reporting and talking to people around the president,” Swan added, “no one is defending this and no one especially comfortable with this. It’s just silence.”

“And I mean this as a serious question, is he unstoppable? Is he out of control? Is he triggered? Is he okay, Jonathan Swan?”

“I’m not going to make pronouncements about his mental health or anything like that. But, yes, of course he’s unstoppable. I mean, this is episode 400 in the last five years,” Swan pointed out. “I actually saw today’s tweet as Trump saying, ‘I’m not going to talk about this anymore. But I’m not apologizing.’ That’s the way I read that tweet. It’s the closest you’ll get to Trump, I think in this episode apologizing, but it’s a fair way from that.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.

Tags: