MSNBC’s Wallace on Nikki Haley Endorsing Trump: ‘We Need Shrinks and Cult Experts to Explain This’

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace said Wednesday on her show “Deadline” that “shrinks and cult experts” needed to explain former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (R) endorsing former President Donald Trump.

Partial transcript as follows:

NBC REPORTER VAUGHN HILLYARD: Nikki Haley, in 2015, said, ‘Donald Trump is everything I taught my children not to do in kindergarten. I told my little ones, you don’t lie and make things up.’ She ended up serving in his administration.

WALLACE: Who are these people?!

HILLYARD: On, January 6, she called it “an ugly day.” She then went and said – a couple months later that she wouldn’t run against him for president. She ended up running for president. And then we saw Nikki Haley – while her husband was deployed to Africa with U.S. armed services – mocked by Donald Trump for being away. And it was the words of Nikki Haley that were very explicit about Donald Trump. [She] said in part that, ‘They were disgusting, awful and unhinged,” and said that “somebody that makes comments like that doesn’t deserve to be commander-in-chief.” Her own husband got on social media and fired back and said, ‘The difference between humans and animals – animals would never allow the dumbest ones to lead the pack.”

His allies pushed extramarital fair rumors about her. This is somebody who suggested that she may not even be eligible to run for president because her parents are immigrants. And today, her announcing she’s going to vote for Donald Trump is just, I think, another chapter in something that we’ve already lived out with the likes of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio eight years ago. She did raise her hand in that Republican debate and said that she would vote for a convicted felon if Donald Trump was found guilty. And today, as evidence that she’s sticking to her word.

WALLACE: We need shrinks and cult experts to explain this because what you’re reporting doesn’t make a lick of sense to me, and it’s so recent. I mean, J.D. Vance, in 2015, said something similar. But for her and her husband to both have been feuding publicly with him just days and weeks before endorsing him is inexplicable to me at a human level.

HILLYARD: I think it’s power. And I think in American politics, access to power and a party that you identify with is a future. And I think that we have a great share of individuals that have proved this time and again, that staying closely associated to Donald Trump is a guarantee that you are relevant within politics if you choose to remain in politics.

WALLACE: It’s unbelievable. Unbelievable.

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