New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof penned a piece over the Memorial Day weekend that detailed the ongoing corruption in President Donald Trump's White House.
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace said that she was reading the column and quickly sent it to everyone she knew. They responded, "Go back to your barbecue."
But Wallace confessed, "I just could not!"
The ex-Republican began the segment by talking about the president accepting a $400 million plane from Qatar mere weeks after he lectured 11-year-old girls that they had "to do more with far, far less."
“Maybe children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally," Trump said during a Cabinet meeting in early May.
All the while, "he attempts to extract as many airplanes and as much money as possible from foreign governments and shadowy business people," she continued. "And if watching it unfold in public brazenly makes you want to tear your hair out," she said the Kristof column argues, "it might turn out to be Donald Trump's Achilles heel."
ALSO READ: 'Second biggest scandal': Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade
" Trump is deeply corrupt," Kristof wrote. "All presidents are accused of shady practices: Remember that President Barack Obama was said to have diminished the presidency by wearing a tan suit. But Trump is a felon who is using his office to enrich himself as no president has in history."
"The New York Times reported that more than $2 billion has flowed to Trump companies in just a month, and some of his ventures look alarmingly like opportunities for influence-peddling," the column continues.
Kristof also wrote that Trump won the presidency over resentment about the economy and inflation. However, "now it’s Trump who is badly damaging the economy and hitting voters in the wallet."
Wallace confessed, "I stopped in my tracks when I read this over the holiday weekend."
"There is this thing — that we threw in with the felon because eggs were too expensive," she said about Trump's second election. "But now it's not just take your eggs and shove it. You know, no pain, no gain. I will have a free jet from any government that will give me one."
Kristof told Wallace that this is corruption that Trump is not even bothering to hide.
He noted that he lives in a "small, rural town in Oregon that voted about 2-1 for Trump." Issues that "Democrats talk about seem, kind of, distant," he said.
However, what is hitting home with the working-class families in his town is that they are suffering under Trump's government cuts. He specifically cited a Trump-friendly household where one woman tried to sign up for Social Security and has had "immense difficulty, presumably because Trump pushed 7,000 Social Security staff out even at a time that staffing was at a 50-year low."
Cuts to things like Medicaid for children add to the issues, he noted, citing the statistic that 40% of children in the U.S. rely on the program. These personal hits are what are turning voters off of Trump. That only adds to fears of another recession, the high cost of groceries and the impact of tariffs on goods from dolls to components critical to electronics.
See the full conversation below or at the link here.
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
