MSNBC journalists immediately derided Donald Trump’s address to the nation about the government shutdown as a “scam” speech and dismissed real-world examples of crime by illegals as “immigrant crime stuff.” Live coverage host Rachel Maddow scoffed, “The President's speech was a litany of scare stories of immigrants being terrible criminals who are coming into the United States to rape and murder Americans, essentially in the President telling, for pleasure because it's in their nature.”
Analyst Nicolle Wallace mocked, “But the big scam of the whole address was that there is a crisis. There is not a crisis.” The co-hosts seemed irritated at having to even discuss actual horror stories, such as the Air Force veteran who was sexually assaulted and murdered. Hayes snapped, “You know, beheading and rape and it's awful stuff to hear. There is genuinely horrific things that have happened but to conflate them with the 12 million people living here is a kind of incitement that’s pretty ugly.”
Maddow minimized this as “slightly different list of crimes that evolves over time.” She waved away Trump’s speech as “this office of immigrant crime stuff.”
A partial transcript is below:
MSNBC Live coverage
1/8/19
9:12pm ET
RACHEL MADDOW: Mainly, though, the President's speech was a litany of scare stories about immigrants being terrible criminals who are coming into the United States to rape and murder Americans, essentially in the President telling, for pleasure because it's in their nature. It's the sort of argument the president made the very first day he came down the escalator in Trump Tower.
...
9:14
NICOLLE WALLACE: I think there are half a dozen things that were wrong, falsehoods, lies and you talked about a lot of them before the speech and went through some of them now. But the big scam of the whole address was that there is a crisis. There is not a crisis. Border crossings at the southern border are a 45-year low.
9:22
CHRIS HAYES: The sort of difference in emphasis between the two is the most notable thing about the two addresses, right? Like Donald Trump went out there and Stephen Miller litany of horror stories, which he has been doing since day one.
WALLACE: In a nicer voice.
HAYES: And I watched him do it in Cleveland. You know, beheading and rape and it's awful stuff to hear. There is genuinely horrific things that have happened but to conflict them with the 12 million people living here is a kind of incitement that’s pretty ugly. But we've heard that. Like Nicole said, that's been the deal.
MADDOW: Slightly different list of crimes that evolves over time.
WALLACE: It updates. There are new crimes.
MADDOW: It updates. But it is this office of immigrant crime stuff.
