On Tuesday's Deadline: White House, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace gushed over allegedly right-leaning New York Times columnist Bret Stephens excoriating Senator Ted Cruz in his latest column, in which he cracked that the Texas Republican would "sell his family into slavery" to win an election.
Near the end of the show and with Stephens on-set, Wallace raised the issue by proclaiming that he "made my year" with the piece as she started quoting from it. Referring to Senator Cruz, she read: "'He's like a serpent covered in Vaseline. Because he treats the American people like two-bit suckers in 10-galon hats.'"
After listing a couple of other criticisms from Stephens to bolster the negative attack, she continued reading from it as she added: "'Because I see him as the spiritual love child of the 1980s televangelist Jimmy Swaggart and Jack Nicholson's character in The Shining. Because his ethics are purely situational. Because he makes Donald Trump look like a human being by comparison.'"
Once Wallace read even more attacks on Cruz, she continued reading: "'Because he's the type of man that would sell his family into slavery if that's what it took to get elected, and then he would use said slavery as a sob story to get himself reelected.'"
After the group laughed, Wallace then commented: "This, I feel like, has been something that I have known since 1999 or 2000. Now, I feel like everybody knows, thanks in part to your very descriptive words today."
As Stephens then elaborated on his anti-Cruz sentiments, he repeated his suggestion that the Texas Republican does not "look like a human being" as he described Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke. here's Stephens: "You have in Beto O'Rourke a guy who's charismatic, who looks like he is a human being, who sounds like a normal person, who seems to be able to rise to the rhetorical occasion. And that contrast with Ted Cruz is so powerful."
