On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace launched into a disjointed rant about President Trump and congressional Republicans in which she alternated between scolding Speaker Paul Ryan and insulting the President.
Wallace’s outburst occurred while she and the rest of the Deadline: White House panel discussed the ultimate strategic implications of the Nunes memo’s release for President Trump and the Republican Party.
The segment began with Wallace reading a line from a Washington Post editorial excoriating Ryan for allowing the Nunes memo to be released by the House Intelligence Committee. To her surprise, panelist Sara Fagen contested the editorial’s characterization of Speaker Ryan, which visibly upset Wallace.
“You have political opponents now putting out information that allows others in the opposite party to be surveilled,” Fagen reasoned. “I think that’s why the Speaker’s concerned."
Wallace was frustrated by Fagen’s willingness to throw the Speaker a bone and began listing her reasons for trusting the notorious Steele dossier. She asserted that Steele was “credible all over the world,” and dubbed him “an expert in Russia.”
“The dossier has not been proven false; a third of it has been proven true,” she continued enthusiastically.
“Donald Trump, I truly believe, doesn’t know any better. I believe he’s the hamburger-eating, zamboni-riding loon that we see on TV and on Twitter. But Paul Ryan? Paul Ryan knows better,” she added.
Fagen once again attempted to explain the Republicans’ mindset, noting that “they didn’t look at all the underlying evidence,” and had instead focused specifically on the dossier. She attempted to list the parties who had funded the dossier, but Wallace quickly interrupted to claim that it had first been funded by Paul Singer, a Republican.
An exasperated Fagen attempted to make her point five more times, and five more times either Wallace or her fellow panelist John Heilemann interrupted her before she could finish a sentence. She was finally permitted to make a point when the topic of discussion changed to the potential upcoming release of the Democratic memo.
