Different host, same deranged hatred for all things Trump . . .
On MSNBC on Monday afternoon, Chris Jansing sat in for Nicolle Wallace on Deadline: White House. As our Bill D'Agostino has documented, Wallace has a history of unhinged Trump hatred. Things got so bad last week that Wallace was forced to apologize for accusing President Trump of "talking about exterminating Latinos."
On Monday's show, the question was whether it would be good political strategy, given President Trump's alleged racism, to accuse the Trump base of being racists for supporting him. They turned to Frank Figliuzzi, an Obama-era FBI official and NBC National Security Analyst.
CHRIS JANSING: I think one of the things, Frank Figliuzzi, is that this president has always, from anyone who was around him, Anthony Scaramucci knows this as well as anybody else, demanded this blind loyalty, right? "I say it, it must be so. Or even if you don’t think it’s so, you don’t criticize me for it."
FRANK FIGLIUZZI: Well, this is why it's so important to look through the lens of radicalization when you look at this president and then apply counterradicalization techniques. Because you're right, attacking his followers is going to be counterproductive. He demands that loyalty, and they are loyal. So if you call Trump followers racist en masse, they simply coalesce around each other and become more defensive and protective of the leader, just as they would in, say, a terrorist organization."
Uh, Frank: if calling Trump supporters racists will backfire, what would be the result if you liken them to members of a terrorist organization?!
It looks like Figliuzzi, to curry favor with MSNBC, is willing to abase himself with absurd anti-Trump allegations. Last week, as our Gregory Price noted, Figliuzzi made a fool of himself, claiming that President Trump, by ordering flags flown at half-staff to honor mass-shooting victims until August 8th, i.e., 8-8, was sending a secret coded message to neo-Nazis.
Earlier in the segment, Figluzzi bizarrely claimed that in Trump's statement after the El Paso and Dayton shootings, "We didn't see him personally renounce the violence, personally say I'm not about white hate."
But a transcript shows he renounced the violence: "These barbaric slaughters are an assault upon our communities, an attack upon our nation, and a crime against all of humanity. We are outraged and sickened by this monstrous evil, the cruelty, the hatred, the malice, the bloodshed, and the terror."
And he renounced the racist hate: "The shooter in El Paso posted a manifesto online consumed by racist hate. In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart, and devours the soul."
