‘No one is sure Trump is going to make it’: Nicole Wallace breaks down why GOP must prep Pence for 2020

President Donald Trump interrupted a relatively quiet stretch on Twitter to attack the "failing" New York Times for its report on Vice President Mike Pence's preparations to launch a White House bid of his own.

But MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Nicole Wallace agreed all signs point to Pence running for president -- despite his protestations to the contrary.

"This is unprecedented," Scarborough said. "This doesn't happen this early, and the vice president can say what the vice president wants to say -- (but) he's setting up a pretty powerful campaign operation whether he tells himself he's doing that or not.

Wallace, the former communications director for President George W. Bush, put it more bluntly.

"Should we just say it out loud?" Wallace said. "No one is sure that Donald Trump is going to make it, including people on the inside."

She said the ongoing investigation into his financial and campaign ties to Russia put Trump at grave risk, and she said Republicans were preparing for the possibility that he won't finish his first term.

"Whether people want to say it or not, it's a known unknown whether Donald Trump will be still standing to run for re-election," Wallace said. "That's not hyperbole -- people don't know where the Russia probe is going to end up. I think even his closest advisors don't know if he's going to have the stomach for the lights on his family. I think this is the reality."