MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace compared former President Trump’s Thursday Capitol Hill visit to an “arsonist going and admiring something he sought to burn down” during an interview with Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California.
Trump convened Thursday morning with House Republicans at the Capitol Hill Club to discuss politics and strategy ahead of the presidential election, according to lawmakers in the room who spoke with the Daily Caller. Wallace on “Deadline: White House” made the comparison in reference to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, with Schiff describing it as him visiting the “scene of the crime” and suggesting the former president inflicted “additional trauma” on Capitol police.
WATCH:
“Some of the law enforcement officials who protected the Capitol, the Democratic and Republican members who work inside of it, have become well known to our viewers, people like Harry Dunn … I imagine some that we don’t know as well were there today when Donald Trump was there. We likened it to an arsonist going and admiring something he sought to burn down. Do you have any sense of how law enforcement felt about Trump being in the building after inciting the insurrection on January 6th?” Wallace asked.
“I can only imagine it is additional trauma given what they went through to protect this institution. And not just the fact he came back to the scene of the crime, but that these senators and house members who fled, whom these police officers so bravely defended, that they are rushing back to the person who put them all in danger that day,” Schiff answered. “That has to be, I think, the most disheartening. And these are law enforcement officers that went through one horror on January 6th and been through a different kind of horror ever since in how their service that day has been denigrated, how people have attempted to create a completely false narrative about that day.”
Schiff during a Thursday hearing repeated the word “guilty” 34 times in a row in reference to former Trump, who a Manhattan jury convicted on 34 felony counts of falsification of business records. Afterward, he accused Republicans of “giving up their political souls.”
House Republicans greeted Trump by singing him Happy Birthday as he turns 78 years old on Friday and gifted him the game ball from the Republicans’ 31-11 victory in Wednesday’s Congressional Baseball Game before he spoke, the Caller reported. Trump mentioned during the meeting that he intends to do 100 tele town halls to help House candidates, describing these events as a “secret weapon,” according to a source familiar in the room.
