Nicolle Wallace Gets Pushback from Her Own Guest After Trying to Blame Jan. 6 for Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine relates directly back to the January 6 Capitol riot right here in the U.S., MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace argued Monday on Deadline: White House.
Wallace’s segment tying the Capitol riot to the Russian invasion began by highlighting recent comments from former National Security Council adviser Fiona Hill arguing that the Capitol riot showed U.S. weakness to Russian President Vladimir Putin. She also argued that if former President Donald Trump had remained in office after losing the 2020 presidential election, Putin may have pushed things further, viewing the U.S. as “no different from any other country in the world that just had a coup.”
Wallace and others agreed with Hill’s claim, though the former received some pushback when speaking to one of her guests.
“What Fiona, I think, puts into undeniable and uncomfortable reality for Republicans is that everything about January 6 made everything about invading Ukraine easier for Vladimir Putin, and I remember the first time I heard Vladimir Putin say Ashli Babbitt’s name,” Wallace said. “I thought, ‘Why is he talking about Ashli Babbitt?’ Just talk about — how January 6 is this? It’s almost like a record on repeat in Russia.”
Puck News correspondent Julia Ioffe countered by saying there were numerous deciding factors behind Putin’s decision, not just witnessing the Capitol riot.
“I do want to pushback on the idea a little bit that January 6 was the deciding moment for Putin. I think there were many moments along the way in the last couple of years that encouraged him, or gave him the false idea that he could go further into Ukraine and achieve his insane paranoid aims without meeting much resistance,” Ioffe said.
Others on the panel were warmer to the direct tie to January 6, with MSNBC legal analyst Daniel Goldman calling it a “triggering moment” for Russia and Putin. Ioffe added that other factors for Putin related to the U.S. could have been witnessing the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as the bitter political infighting through both Trump and Joe Biden’s presidencies.
“All of it showed Vladimir Putin that … the U.S. is not a reliable partner to its geopolitical partners, that we were so busy chasing our own tales internally that everybody could be manipulated every which way, especially the Republican Party, so he kind of had a clear path to Kyiv,” she said.
