On Monday's Deadline: White House, MSNBC contributor Steve Schmidt railed against President Donald Trump and his supporters as the former Republican-turned-Democrat complained that the Trump "faction" is "trying to impose systematic cruelty upon all the rest of us," and even threw in a Hitler reference as he invoked "Munich circa 1928."
Even though the former John McCain campaign strategist last week announced via Twitter that "I renounce my membership in the Republican Party" and pledged to vote for Democrats in the future, he was still credited on screen as a "Republican strategist."
During a discussion of the illegal immigration issue, host Nicolle Wallace suggested that President Trump is unaware of efforts by past Presidents to make a bipartisan deal in immigration reform as she exclaimed: "I mean, how -- how -- how -- how ignorant is he?"
Schmidt began: "He couldn't be more ignorant. He's a supernova of ignorance -- it's incredible."
The MSNBC contributor then made a reference to Adolf Hitler's Nazi movement as it existed in the 1920s as he added:
He's inciting, through mass rallies and constantly lying, fervor in a political base. He scapegoats minority populations and affixes blame to them for every problem the country faces. He alleges conspiracies of nefarious forces. He creates a mass sense of victimization among his base.
And then he asserts extraordinary claims of power to protect the victims from the scapegoated populations and the nefarious conspiracy. That is fundamentally illiberal -- deeply un-American -- and, frankly, could be straight out of Munich circa 1928.
Later in the show, he complained that Trump's "faction" of the country are trying to "impose systematic cruelty" on the rest of the country, and suggested that administration officials deserve to be harassed in public places:
This policy is one of purposeful, abject cruelty and meanness. It's not accidental. This is Donald Trump, and he's using very purposeful words -- "infestation," "invasion" -- to incite fervor in a base. He doesn't even have a pretense any longer of being President of the entire country.
He is the leader of a faction that is trying to impose systematic cruelty upon all the rest of us, and that's why -- it wasn't that Sarah Sanders was kicked out of a restaurant because she lies every day -- it wasn't until we had three-year-olds in cages that these people couldn't go into public. Too bad on them.
It did not occur to Schmidt that part of the argument in favor of trying to deter immigrants from bringing their children across the border illegally is because it often means traveling through the desert or across a river, risking the child's safety. Legitimate asylum seekers can go through a port of entry safely to apply for asylum legally and avoid being separated from their children.
There's also the option of applying for asylum in Mexico instead of the United States.
