MSNBC’s Jen Psaki Trashes Trump as ‘Man-Baby’ Amid ‘Gut Punch’ White House Demolition

MSNBC host and former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki torpedoed President Donald Trump over his “gut punch” demolition at the White House, calling him an “insecure man-baby” who is destroying democracy.

Since taking office for a second time, Trump has overseen massive changes to the physical features of the White House, including a gold-drenched Oval Office overhaul, a paved-over lawn in the Rose Garden, and now a major demolition in the East Wing to make way for a massive ballroom.

In fact, an unnamed White House official told NBC News on Wednesday that the entire East Wing will be demolished and “rebuilt” — contrary to previous assurances.

On Wednesday’s edition of MSNBC’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki, the host opened the show with a blistering commentary that included her own disgust and shock at the demolition and its symbolism:

JEN PSAKI: We are in the middle of it right now. And I think everybody watching — most people watching, not everybody feels that. I mean, for anyone out there who thinks that this might still sound alarmist or hyperbolic, Trump has been blowing through the constitutional checks on his power more rapidly with each passing day. In just the last week, we learned that Trump is reportedly demanding that the Justice Department pay him nearly a quarter of a billion dollars at the expense of American taxpayers. We saw him illegally fire yet another independent government watchdog without notifying Congress. We’re seeing him allow the Pentagon to restrict the way staff and personnel engage with Congress, which is completely insane.

And just today, we learned that Trump carried out his eighth, yes, eighth extrajudicial strike on a boat that he claimed without evidence was smuggling drugs. No trial, no investigation, no attempt by the Coast Guard to intervene, just summarily executing people whether they’re guilty or not, because Trump said so.

And as if any of that was too subtle, which it definitely is not, this week, Trump began literally tearing apart the physical foundations of the executive branch, demolishing the historic East Wing of the White House. We learned today that the whole East Wing will be demolished entirely without consultation with any review agency, without consultation with the American people, and against even his own promise not to do exactly this.

Now, to me personally, this is an absolute gut punch, not just because of the history of the building, of which there is a lot, and the hundreds of thousands of guests who have visited what should always be known as the people’s house and walk down the long hallway looking at the photos of former presidents and their families and their pets, and peered into the old movie theater that was there, too.

But because Donald Trump is only doing this because he is an insecure man-baby who wants to build a gaudy new ballroom that looks like a gilded event space from his club in Palm Beach to boost his own fragile ego. I mean, look at what he did to the Oval Office. To paraphrase the president himself, nobody in our country has ever seen anything like this. He’s going to do whatever he wants or try to.

And the kind of authoritarian power grab we’re seeing from Trump right now is an entirely new challenge. So it will require an entirely new response. We know this already. Business as usual is not going to work. Strongly worded letters are not going to work. This moment is going to take new and novel and creative forms of resistance from a broad swath of people to push back on it.

That is what elected officials like Jeff Merkley tried to do by holding the floor for 22 hours. And luckily, he’s not alone. And I don’t just mean Cory Booker doing it a few months ago. I mean, today we saw Governor Gavin Newsom send a clear message on what the National Guard are supposed to be used for, helping their communities. He announced today that he is deploying his state’s National Guard not to crack down on peaceful dissent, like Trump, but to support local food banks that are seeing a spike in demand after Trump’s government shutdown cut access to critical food assistance.

Watch above via MSNBC’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki.