MS NOW panel laughs at Trump official's excuse for speech lies: 'Not the flex he thinks'
President Donald Trump's National Economic Council chair Kevin Hassett went on MS NOW on Thursday to try to defend the president's meandering, lie-filled speech the previous night — but the excuse he came up with had Nicolle Wallace and former Republican congressman turned Florida Democratic governor candidate David Jolly shaking their heads in disbelief.
"You know, I'd have to go back and look at the specific language," said Hassett. "But ... the president, in order to make sure that everybody understood the facts and the facts were documented, spent a lot of time with us, with our team, preparing slides that that showed the data for what he was talking about in the speech and in some networks while he was speaking, they showed the slides and in some networks they didn't. And I just thought that was kind of unusual. I was expecting, when I was flipping around, to just see the slides everywhere. Gosh, we spent so much time, more time on them. But, you know, I think that the president had documentation for the facts that he was saying they were in the slides."
Wallace on her show, "Deadline: White House," found this response ludicrous.
"So, David, I worked at the White House for six years," she said. "The slides would have explained my incoherent boss, not the flex that he thinks it is. And in six years, nobody ever ran a fact sheet for any speech that any politician I ever worked for ever gave. I mean, what? He lies, but you got to read the fact sheet?"
"I'm not sure what the nation was missing last night was a PowerPoint," said Jolly. "That wouldn't have made things any better. Look, you can't tell people how to feel. As I mentioned, people feel anxious. I think we're in a generational moment of economic anxiety that requires solutions. And here's the real problem. We can argue over where real growth is, where wages are, where employment is. The fact is, people are screaming for change and for solutions. And Donald Trump doesn't have solutions that can fit."
"Look, you and I took a similar journey through the Republican Party, when we at least understood there was some role for government — that was the less government era," said Jolly. "After, an era of no government and government's the enemy. Here's the problem for Republicans. I am more convinced than ever ... the economy should work for everybody. Absolutely everybody. That doesn't mean we condemn success, but we got to fight to make sure the economy works for everyone."
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