In the hours following President-elect Donald Trump’s Thursday night post-election rally, the liberal media’s utter inability to control their emotions could have united even the most ardent Never Trump supporters with examples like MSNBC national correspondent Joy Reid suddenly showing reservations about a president and his immediate family lacking military service despite it being the case for two of the last three First Families (Clinton and Obama).
“Remember, you know, Donald Trump who did not serve his country, who was the correct age, the appropriate age to go to Vietnam, got five deferments, has — was never asked about it by the way during the entirety of the campaign for 18 months,” Reid complained at one point during MSNBC’s The Last Word.
Reid and the assembled cast of characters arrived on this topic after Trump took a shot at one-time debate moderator and ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz for breaking down in tears while attacking Trump over becoming Commander in Chief.
Without a shred of evidence other than Trump clearly alluding to Raddatz at the rally, host Lawrence O’Donnell recklessly claimed that Raddatz weeping was “the moment that Donald Trump remembers more than any other” on Election Night and teed up Reid to pile on.
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Reid first declared that Trump is someone “who was without empathy” and bolstered her claim by pointing to Trump’s lack of military service that he shares with former President Bill Clinton and outgoing-President Barack Obama (but that last part didn’t seem to worth pointing out):
Remember, you know, Donald Trump who did not serve his country, who was the correct age, the appropriate age to go to Vietnam, got five deferments, has — was never asked about it by the way during the entirety of the campaign for 18 months. No one ever asked him to defend the fact that he's never sacrificed anything for this country who said not getting venereal disease was his Vietnam.
O’Donnell naturally agreed and brought up Clinton’s case but defended him because he supposedly faced serious scrutiny:
Bill Clinton when he ran in 1992, who also avoided service which was, by the way, what most men were doing. Let’s remember this. Bill Clinton had to go through every step of what he did, and he couldn't be proud of every step of what he did because of stuff that looked deceptive to his draft board, but he was dragged through every part of that.
When the AM Joy host could resume her meltdown, she declared that “[e]very man who's run for president since the Vietnam era has had to account for the Vietnam era” besides Trump and with no one in his immediately family having served either, he and his children have only relied on “service” that’s “has been to themselves, their own pocket books, to their own egos, to their own needs and he is a bottomless pit of need and what he needs is adulation.”
She continued excoriating Trump for finding it “intolerable” that he lost the popular vote but eventually returned to the topic of the military and fretted that, all of a sudden, every United States solider will have a target on their backs (and somehow not before) simply because Trump will be president:
This is a needy, narcissistic man who is not a man who understands and can conceptualize sacrifice for one's country, so yeah, if I had a son or daughter in the military, I would be concerned. You know, Caitlyn Dawson on our show this weekend was talking about the fact that now anything with Trump's name on it around the world becomes a target. If I'm in the military, I don't want that to be my child's mission, to defend the name of Trump, the person of the state. That isn't what we are as Americans.
The relevant portion of the transcript from MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on December 1 can be found below.
MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
December 1, 2016
10:28 p.m. Eastern
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: I want to go back to that point he made about someone as he put it, one of the moderators of the debates crying. Let's look at what Martha Raddatz actually had to say the night of the election.
ABC’s MARTHA RADDATZ [on 11/09/16]: Tim Kaine has a son in the Marine Corps. He was asked, by John Dickerson, “So if Donald Trump is democratically elected, and your son is serving as a Marine, you wouldn't trust his life under that commander-in-chief? And Kaine said, I wouldn't. That's a pretty extraordinary thing to say [voice breaks] if you have a son in the Marine Corps and you don’t trust the Commander in Chief. The people [voice breaks] in the military defend the Constitution.
O’DONNELL: Joy, that's the moment that Donald Trump remembers more than any other on that night.
JOY REID: Yeah because so, Donald Trump is a person who you and I have had lots of conversations with Tony Schwartz. He knows him. He wrote Art of the Deal. He’s a person who was without empathy. Remember, you know, Donald Trump who did not serve his country, who was the correct age, the appropriate age to go to Vietnam, got five deferments, has — was never asked about it by the way during the entirety of the campaign for 18 months. No one ever asked him to defend the fact that he's never sacrificed anything for this country who said not getting venereal disease was his Vietnam.
O’DONNELL: Yeah, not one Trump interviewer.
REID: Not one
O’DONNELL: Not one person who had the opportunity to interview had him walk us through the deferments.
REID: That’s right.
O’DONNELL: Bill Clinton when he ran in 1992, who also avoided service which was, by the way, what most men were doing.
REID: Correct.
O’DONNELL: Let’s remember this.
REID: Yeah. That’s right. That’s correct.
O’DONNELL: Bill Clinton had to go through every step of what he did, and he couldn't be proud of every step of what he did because of stuff that looked deceptive to his draft board, but he was dragged through every part of that.
REID: Every man who's run for president since the Vietnam era has had to account for the Vietnam era. It’s been a searing part of our politics. Donald Trump was never asked about it, unlike Tim Kaine and even Mike Pence, he doesn’t have any family members — immediate — none of his family have served. They've essentially been a family whose entire service has been to themselves, their own pocket books, to their own egos, to their own needs and he is a bottomless pit of need and what he needs is adulation and for any journalist to dare to not be elated that Donald Trump will now be their president is intolerable to him. It’s the reason that losing that losing the election — losing the popular voter is intolerable to him. It incredibly triggers him to be reminded that Hillary Clinton beat him in the popular vote, because just the idea of being beaten, bested by a woman and any woman, not, absolutely being in awe of him triggers and bothers him. This is a needy, narcissistic man who is not a man who understands and can conceptualize sacrifice for one's country, so yeah, if I had a son or daughter in the military, I would be concerned. You know, Caitlyn Dawson on our show this weekend was talking about the fact that now anything with Trump's name on it around the world becomes a target. If I'm in the military, I don't want that to be my child's mission, to defend the name of Trump, the person of the state. That isn't what we are as Americans.
