MSNBC Panel Bursts Into Laughter At Host’s ‘Introvert’ Quip Discussing Trump’s Debate Dodge

MSNBC’s The Weekend panelists erupted into laughter as host Alicia Menendez playfully excused former President Donald Trump’s latest debate swerve as standard “introvert” excuse-making.

On Sunday, Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris announced that she had accepted the terms for a CNN-hosted presidential debate, only for the former president to argue that it was “too late” at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina – adding that voting had already started.

After rolling back the clip from Trump’s rally Menendez prompted laughter from guest panelists as she began: “So, I’m an introvert…”

She continued: “I don’t want to be invited to your party, I don’t want to go to your party and that sounds a lot like what I have to say when I am trying to find a way out. ‘I have to wash my hair. It’s complicated. I just don’t know. I got to get a babysitter.’ Trump does not want to do this.”

After the amusement died down, Politico Playbook journalist Eugene Daniels quipped that the host had “what people call Joy of Missing Out: JOMO”

As serious analysis began, he suggested that Trump might be “working through things in real time.”

Daniels speculated that the “too late” excuse could have been an offhand remark but did point out that presidential debates typically happen in mid-to-late October, meaning the window for one is far from closed and it was normal for debates to go on even when early voting has started.

He continued:

People around him know that he did not do well in this debate. He’s very good at kind of pulling the things that are good, that happened that he feels really good about or that he feels maybe Vice President Harris didn’t do because he’s very online and the folks that he talked to they don’t push back on him in the same way that, maybe, some folks push back on their principles and trying to explain to them how bad things went.

And so he has a different view of it. He doesn’t feel like he needs to do it. But also people have to remember that Donald Trump has done this before. The ABC debate, he had already said that he wasn’t going to do, it’s possible he changes his mind depending on how this poll and other polls, as we get closer to that date, if they change and it’s looking worse and worse for him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he changed his mind.

Watch above on MSNBC.