Tensions were high on Thursday’s Deadline: White House as host Nicolle Wallace and her outraged panel fumed over Rudy Giuliani’s recent remarks about porn star Stormy Daniels. As the MSNBC host's frustration boiled over, she speculated whether the women in the Trump family were, “numb,” “dead inside,” or “paid off.”
“Rudy Giuliani is the last person anyone wants to hear from about feminism, about women,” quipped Huffington Post reporter Laura Bassett, who went on to list Donald Trump's questionable romantic history:
[Giuliani] is working for a President who has been accused credibly by more than 15 women of sexual assault, who has two wives who've posed nude for money, who owned a Miss Teen USA Pageant where girls were parading on stage in their bathing suits and getting judged.
Finally, she spat, “Giuliani needs to shut his mouth.”
Vanity Fair senior reporter Emily Jane Fox initially expressed outrage on Melania Trump's behalf, having concluded that the First Lady's nude photo shoot for GQ back in 2000 meant that Giuliani's comments were equally applicable to her. “What he said about Stormy Daniels was disgusting. It gave me a pit in my stomach when I woke up this morning,” she complained. “But,” she continued breathlessly, “my first reaction was, ‘This is so disrespectful to the First Lady.’”
But Fox soon lost track of her original point, and she and Wallace proceeded to deride both Melania and Ivanka Trump. The MSNBC host responded with a follow-up question for Fox, which started out harmlessly: “You know more about the Trump women, the Trump family, than anyone. What do they do on a day like today? Are they just the most stoic human beings?”
Unfortunately, she chose not to end the question there. “Are they numb?” she continued. “Are they dead inside? Are they paid off? I mean, what’s their deal?”
“Yes, yes, and yes,” answered the alleged expert on Trump women, just moments after admonishing the thought of disrespecting the First Lady. Putting on her psychoanalyst’s hat, Fox offered her explanation for how Melania and Ivanka Trump dealt with the President’s remarks about women:
They do not see President Trump the way that all of us see President Trump. They have such a distorted image of who he is that they don’t have the kind of reaction that we do. It’s almost some sort of trick and spell that he has them in.
“But they’re mothers now,” Wallace reasoned. “And they seem to be raising nice kids. How do they wall it off?”
Fox helpfully reminded Wallace that she was “looking at this as a rational person,” whereas the Trump women, apparently, were not. “Ivanka Trump is the most masterful compartmentalizer America has maybe ever seen,” she explained sagely.
As the only two men present, Deadline: White House regular Donny Deutsch and MSNBC darling Michael Avenatti wisely kept their opinions to themselves.
See below for a transcript of Wallace and Fox's conversation:
MSNBC’s Deadline: White House
06/07/2018
4:30:24 – 4:31:26 p.m. EDT
1 minute, 2 secondsEMILY JANE FOX: What he said about Stormy Daniels was disgusting, gave me a pit in my stomach when I woke up this morning. But my first reaction was, “This is so disrespectful to the First Lady.”
NICOLLE WALLACE: Let me ask you, you know more about the Trump women, the Trump family, than anyone. What do they do on a day like today? Are they just the most stoic human beings? Are they numb? Are they dead inside? Are they paid off? I mean, what’s their deal?
FOX: Yes, yes, and yes. But I think, they do not see President Trump the way that all of us see President Trump. They have such a distorted image of who he is that they don’t have the kind of reaction that we do. It’s almost some sort of trick and spell that he has them in –
WALLACE: But they’re mothers now. What kind of – and they seem to be raising nice kids. How do they wall it off?
FOX: You are looking at this as a rational person. But I have written this a million times: Ivanka Trump is the most masterful compartmentalizer America has maybe ever seen. And so her ability to separate this out from then going and sitting in the West Wing and doing or job, or going and visiting her father in the Oval Office. She is able to separate those things in a way that you and I probably can’t understand.
