Appearing as a guest on Monday's Morning Joe, MSNBC contributor Steve Schmidt started railing against Republican candidates running in this year's Senate and congressional elections, applying the words "kook," "nut," "crook" and "weirdo" to several different candidates.
At 7:37 a.m. Eastern, the former Republican took aim at Tennessee GOP Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn as he began his analysis:
Let's start with the Tennessee race. Phil Bredeson -- we have a candidate who's well-known, former governor, former mayor of the city of Nashville, running against a Republican candidate who on the one to 10 kook scale clocks in at about 13.3. So no surprise that he would be ahead in that race.
Allegedly right-leaning host Joe Scarborough was amused by his guest's attack on Blackburn.
A bit later, Schmidt also fretted about West Virginia Democratic Senate nominee Joe Manchin's use of a gun in his ads: "I would say the use of it to shoot legislation is probably irresponsible for a responsible gun owner to be able to go and do."
And, referring to North Carolina 9th Congressional District Republican nominee Mark Harris's race against Democratic nominee Dan McCready, Schmidt invoked The Handmaid's Tale series as he soon added:
And the Republicans fundamentally have a nut problem in a lot of these races. You have a lot of nut ball candidates. You look at the McReady race in North Carolina. He's literally running against Commander Waterford from The Handmaid's Tale who's out on the campaign trail talking about the necessity of women submitting to their husbands -- just extraordinary.
Schmidt then went after a number of other Republicans:
So when you look at these races -- and you look at it through, for example, the corruption lane. You know, you put the Duncan Hunter seat, so we have the crooked Republican lane, we have the nut Republican lane, we have the weirdo Republican lane, and then we have your normal Republicans that are just swept up in the tide who have shown cowardice and complicity in the age or Trump, and thus they've alienated all these college-educated suburban Republican women. So I think it is not good tidings heading into election day.
