MSNBC’s angry coverage on Tuesday night of Donald Trump’s address to the nation included calling it a “scam” speech that focused on “immigrant crime stuff.” Network analyst Steve Schmidt continued this trend, telling Lawrence O’Donnell that the “clown” President is a good argument “against the theory of evolution.”
Schmidt simply hurled insults, insisting that the government will reopen and even the “Republican minority in the House, the Republican majority in the Senate, will have joined every world leader, most of the American people, as a group who do not take this man seriously at all. They look at him as a joke, a clown and a farce.”
Schmidt assailed, “And you consider that speech, what a powerful argument it makes against the theory of evolution.”
Though Schmidt found Trump’s speech to be tired and “broken,” it seems as though the MSNBC analyst’s attacks were pretty rote. He mocked, “As we look at the continuing debasement of the office of the presidency of the United States. We saw from Trump today the typical lying, the racial demagoguery, the nonsense, the spinning of crises out of whole cloth.”
A partial transcript is below:
Last Word
1/8/18
10:12
STEVE SCHMIDT: I was struck, though, by the venue, the Oval Office. I thought about FDR and Churchill in the early hours of the Second World War in the space, inches from where Trump addressed the nation. Plotting to save democracy and western civilization. And you consider that speech, what a powerful argument it makes against the theory of evolution.
As we look at the continuing debasement of the office of the presidency of the United States. We saw from Trump today the typical lying, the racial demagoguery, the nonsense, the spinning of crises out of whole cloth. What was most apparent was the degree in which he appears to be an utterly defeated and broken man. Somebody who feels the walls closing in on him. It was a low-energy speech. I suspect the political consequence of it will be that Republicans are going to crack. They're going to take a walk in the serious way for the first time during the Trump presidency. They're going to start to lose their fear of him. What they saw in 2018 was 40 Republicans lose their seats.
They saw the House flip to Democratic control in the map in 2020 is a map that's very favorable to the Democrats unlike this map in 2018. So this is a disaster. Of course, Trump claimed full credit for it, celebrated it, said he would be proud of the shutdown. And so we see now Republicans living with the consequences of having an inept lying, incompetent, racially demagogic president talking about this issue and last thing, Lawrence, there is a humanitarian crisis at the border. We have children in internment camps and we have two minor children, the last one a seven-year-old little girl who died in a custody of federal authorities of the government of the United States It stains our national honor and disgraces this administration.
...
10:14
SCHMIDT: You describe them as supporters earlier, Lawrence, and I don't mean to quibble, but they're less supporters than there they are marks. The only things missing from the e-mail was, “Hey, I'll throw in a case of Trump wine and a couple Trump steaks and master's degree from Trump University.” This is a con man at work. And what we're seeing here is that these wizard has been exposed. At rally after rally, what did he say? Many billions of times the Mexicans would pay for the wall. Where are the pesos? He's talking about $5 billion when he told the American people over and over again that there would be a wall, a wall paid for by Mexico. There is no wall. There will never be a wall.
...
[Speaking of Republicans.]
SCHMIDT: They will re-open the government and at that point, what will become clear is that even the Republican minority in the House, the Republican majority in the Senate, will have joined every world leader, most of the American people, as a group who do not take this man seriously at all. They look at him as a joke, a clown and a farce.
