On Thursday’s Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, the host played a clip of Carly Fiorina pushing back at a voter criticizing American Muslims by insisting “We judge people as individuals.” Even as O’Donnell thought she was providing a lesson for Donald Trump, former MSNBC host Alex Wagner wanted to deny her any credit as long as she's somehow comparable to George Wallace (a Democrat) and still might gain support from “a dissatisfied, xenophobic, and nativist group of voters.”
Apparently, MSNBC is never tapping into a base of angry racist voters when it hires Al Sharpton to bumble through anchorman duties and pushes "Black Lives Matter" talking points.
O’DONNELL: All right, Alex Wagner, Donald Trump should be taking notes.
WAGNER: Yes, he should be taking notes, but to some extent, even Carly Fiorina I think plays into a group of dissatisfied middle American voters that are the legacy of George Wallace and to some degree Ross Perot and certainly Pat Buchanan. But they've been around for decades and they're not going anywhere. I mean, and the reality is, look, Donald Trump is a force of nature, but he is also tapping into something that is very much still part of American society.
And Carly Fiorina is also tapping into a dissatisfied, xenophobic and nativist group of voters. And if they`re careful -- I think she should be commended for pushing back on that. But at the end of the day, neither one of them is ever going to be able to speak as vociferously and as -- I think probably powerfully in shutting down that kind of line of attack, given the fact that there is some part of that base that they will continue to court.
O`DONNELL: And Jonathan Allen, what she did not say to that audience member is, you're wrong.
JONATHAN ALLEN, VOX: That`s right, Lawrence, she didn't say you're wrong. But that was a pretty forceful statement, I think. And especially coming from Fiorina, if Alex is right and that she's courting the nativists in a way that Donald Trump is, this was certainly not a way to do that. And I think having candidates draw lines and talk about what it is to be an American and how we respect each other's, you know, the places where each other came from, before we're all citizens.
This kind of deep thought put the Wagner show on the ash heap of TV history.
