As twice-indicted former president Trump continues to await what will almost certainly be a third indictment, MSNBC host Alex Wagner has noticed a certain trend that leads to each new indictment. As she explained it on Friday night’s episode of her show, Trump continues to project his own crimes onto others.
“One of the central ironies of Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents is that Trump himself was elected president after attacking Hillary Clinton over her handling of classified documents,” Wagner noted. “And he accused Clinton of trying to cover it up by destroying evidence in an unorthodox way.”
On Thursday, a superseding indictment was issued for Trump, adding three more charges to the second indictment he received. Among those charges is the allegation that Trump conspired with employees of his to destroy surveillance footage that proved he had classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Of course, that sounded pretty familiar to Wagner.
Wagner then pulled up a series of clips in which Trump maintained that Clinton bleached her emails. The host explained with a laugh that Trump had mixed up the name of a program called BleachBit with the actual household cleaning material that he later suggested as a cure for COVID.
“The point here is that the thing Trump falsely accused Hillary Clinton of doing is exactly what Jack Smith has just accused Donald Trump of doing,” Wagner said.
It’s not all together a surprising move for the former president though, she argued.
“It is the kind of projection that we have seen time and again from Donald Trump,” she said. “He accused Hillary Clinton of corrupt business practices and misusing her charities. He accused Joe Biden of blackmailing the Ukrainian government, and trying to steal an election.”
She continued, “All things that Trump himself has been charged with, or sued over, or impeached for. Many — many — of the things he accuses someone else of doing, is something Trump himself has either done or might do.”
Wagner then cited a colleague’s words, saying that, for Trump “every accusation is a confession.” The host then turned to Trump’s former fixer and now outspoken critic, Michael Cohen, to ask if that lined up with what he witnessed while working for Trump.
The answer was pretty simple: yes.
“It’s always about deflection, and it’s always about projection,” Cohen said. “Because he believes that everyone is as guilty and as underhanded as he. And so, he wants to be first to the line. It’s a real psychosis.”
You can watch the full conversation from “Alex Wagner Tonight” in the video above.
