Seth Meyers had MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on as a guest last night, and they talked about the challenges of covering the Orange Cheeto.
"You made a choice in talking about Donald Trump's tweet that he fired off on Sunday not to talk about the story and to talk about how he attacked those four Congresswomen in a racist way, but not to read the tweets. Can you tell us how you came to that decision?" Meyers said.
"Well, we as a show have made a lot of choices about not repeating the most hateful things that come out of the White House. And having worked there, I think I'm particularly triggered by the use of the White House property, the White House lawn, the press secretary's podium for spewing hate speech, for spewing lies," Wallace said.
"So we stopped airing Sarah Sanders' briefings. We don't take Donald Trump live. We feel like we're firehosing our viewers by doing that. We listen to it and turn it around as news. And with these tweets, there was a way to cover the story, talk about what he did, describe it without repeating them.
"And he told the world last week that his strategy is to detonate stink bombs on Twitter and then watch all of us run around, you know, like maniacs. So we thought, let's not play into it, and I - you know, listen. Everyone has to make their own choices. We all watch Trump. We all watch the same thing and have very different reactions. For me sometimes, it's a matter of self-preservation, not to repeat the most hideous things he does." (Nicolle, honey, bloggers feel you on that!)
"There obviously is some hesitation in the press and a ton of hesitation in the Republican Party to call those tweets racist. Where do you think that hesitation comes from? And do you think --ultimately, do you think there's a situation with -- the Republicans are so all-in now that to call this racist would, of course, question why they haven't said it about anything yet and would put them in a bad position for whatever next racist thing he does," Meyers said.
"There is no explanation," Wallace said.
"You know, I have a child. I mean, you cannot look your children, your family members, anyone that doesn't do what we do, in the eye and say this is anything other than racism. And when we stop calling black black, white white, up up, down down, he's won."
