Nicolle Wallace rips Trump's attempt to downplay Manafort's role: ‘Idiocy and incompetence’ is not a legal defense

MSNBC anchor and former George W. Bush communications director Nicolle Wallace blasted the absurdity of the legal defense being offered by President Donald Trump in the wake of multiple arrests of former Trump campaign staff.

Wallace explained Manafort having multiple passports. "All of this is part of what prosecutors call his history of deceptive and misleading conduct. Something the Trump team has purported to know nothing about when they hired him to chair their campaign."

"This idea...that their idiocy and incompetence is now a legal defense -- boggles my mind," Wallace explained.

"And remember, Donald Trump said he's going to surround himself with the best people and instead you have this picture of the campaign that looks like the island of the misfit toys," Charlie Sykes explained.

Sykes explained the White House defense as, "these charges against Paul Manafort don't reflect on Donald Trump because he was a criminal when he hired him as chairman of the campaign," Sykes explained. "It's interesting how many of these people were attracted to the Trump orbit and were empowered by Trump throughout the campaign and in the administration."

Jeremy Bash, a former chief of staff at the CIA and Pentagon, explained how the type of people who were attracted to the campaign may in the end do in the administration.

"When you have a team of folks who fundamentally lack the integrity as we've been discussing, you know, they're not going to be straight when they're interviewed, when they give testimony, and that's going to expose them to more legal jeopardy. It's going to give Bob Mueller more tools to have leverage over them and it's going to ultimately ensnare more people in the president's inner circle," Bash predicted.

Watch: