MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace laughed in disbelief after showing viewers an excerpt from Donald Trump’s recent interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson in which the former president lauded authoritarian leaders as “top of the line.”
“You can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep, or in the case of the twice-impeached, disgraced, now-indicted ex-president, the people they praise loudly on Fox News,” Wallace said Wednesday.
She showed viewers a clip from Trump’s Fox News interview, which aired Tuesday. “They’re all top of the line,” Trump said of Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Our guy’s not top of the line ― never was,” he added, referring to President Joe Biden.
Trump also called Xi a “brilliant man” and praised Kim and Putin as “very smart.”
Hooting with laughter, Wallace said: “I don’t even know where to start. No one called you top of the line. Ever!”
The MSNBC host noted that she typically avoids amplifying Trump or Fox News, but said that this rhetoric provided important context on the recent Republican-led efforts to strip back abortion rights, implement voter suppression laws and silence dissent in the Tennessee state legislature.
“It’s important to understand they’re not bodily functions. They’re not burping out random policies. They’re following their leader, who’s following the world’s most heinous authoritarians,” Wallace said. “And we showed you that to show you just how dangerous his rhetoric is.”
“He’s such an idiot, on top of all else,” she later added. “And he sounds like such a bleepin’ idiot.”