Nicolle Wallace: GOP leaders should stand up before Trump potentially 'ruins everything America stands for'

Former George Bush White House Communications Director Nicolle Wallace on Friday asked why no Republican is “willing to lose their jobs to save the country,” explaining Donald Trump could “potentially ruin everything America stands for.”


Speaking with GOP strategist Steve Schmidt, Wallace asked about Sen. Bob Corker’s (R-TN) remarkable interview last weekend, where the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations described Trump as leading the nation to World War III.

“Three big things that happened this week,” then 100 smaller things that any other time would be a big thing,” Schmidt told Wallace, turning first to Corker’s comments.

“[Corker is saying] the White House is essentially adult day care,” Schmidt said. “The president of the United States, mentally, is incapacitated at some level, and how profoundly worried he is about it.”

Schmidt then turned to the president’s suggestion that federal aid with somehow limit the time spent in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, a claim numerous government agencies were forced to walk back this week.

“We have seen smallness, we have seen the moral obtusity after Charlottesville, the collapse of his moral authority for all time,” Schmidt explained. “The first time, talking about the good nazis that are marching, but now we see American citizens, our country men, dying in Puerto Rico because of the malfeasance and incompetence of this administration, and the serial dishonesty the lack of credibility.”

Finally, turning to the president’s relentless attacks on the press, Schmidt explained, “It's not for nothing that they call it First Amendment.”

“In a free society, we cannot maintain liberty without the freedom of expression, of speech, of religion,” Schmidt said. “There has never been an American president that has openly attacked the First Amendment the way that Donald Trump did.”

“These are attacks that are at a foundational level on some of the most important pillars of American society,” Schmidt said, adding it’s insane “to see a president so fundamentally unsuited for this line of work.”

“It is startling, right?” Wallace asked.

“Why isn't there one person among the 16 Republican opponents who were willing to say, ‘It might cost me my spot in this race, but I'm going to go down having said what you just said. That he is dangerous. That he doesn't understand what makes us great. Why won't [House Speaker] Raul Ryan (R-WI) do that now?’”

Wallace added Trump could “potentially ruin everything America stands for.”

“Why don't they see it as part of their jobs to be willing to lose their jobs to save the country,” she wondered.