MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace quite literally threw out her prepared script on Friday on-air while covering breaking news about a new public attack from former president Donald Trump. The visibly angry anchor told a panel of guests that “it’s time to do something different” when speaking about Trump’s outrageous and sometimes dangerous actions on and offline.
Wallace picked up her news script and tossed it to her right as she explained, “I have come on the air with breaking news about requests for gag orders because of threats for judges and their kids more times than I can count today before I got ready.”
After she apologized to the person who “has to write the banner at the bottom of my show,” Wallace added, “Donald Trump broke the rule of law. We should cover a broken judiciary in this country. Donald Trump managed to delay every federal, criminal trial based on facts that he barely denies.”
“Donald Trump managed to enlist the Supreme Court in a delayed process — the highest court in the land. Donald Trump brazenly and repeatedly attacks not just judges … judges don’t have Secret Service protecting them.”
Wallace spoke in response to a Truth Social post that Trump published on Thursday about the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, who had previously placed Trump on a gag order before his April 15 court date in his hush money trial.
Trump wrote, “Judge Juan Merchan is totally compromised, and should be removed from this TRUMP Non-Case immediately. His Daughter, Loren, is a Rabid Trump Hater, who has admitted to having conversations with her father about me, and yet he gagged me.”
“She works for Crooked Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, and other Radical Leftists who Campaign on ‘Getting Trump,’ and fundraise off the ‘Biden Indictments’ – including this Witch Hunt, which her father ‘presides’over, a TOTAL Conflict – and attacking Biden’s Political Opponent through the Courts. Former D.A. Cy Vance refused to bring this case, as did all Federal Agencies, including ‘Elections.’
The claim about Merchan’s daughter has not been prove true.
Trump’s repeated use of social media to fire unsubstantiated and unwarranted accusations at his political opponents (perceived and real) is unprecedented in American politics, and has posed a real danger to his targets.
The gag order in Trump’s hush money case is meant to prohibit both Trump and surrogates from making public statements about jurors and witnesses in the trial. He is also banned from making statements about the court’s staff, prosecutors, and family members. The gag order does not prohibit Trump from commenting on Judge Merchan or his family members.
The hush money case is the first of Trump’s four federal cases that will go to trial. He is accused of logging payments to his former lawyer Michael Cohen as legal fees when they were actually for his work during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Those payments included $130,000 to adult entertainment star Stormy Daniels to ensure she would not speak about a sexual encounter she had with Trump.
Trump has pled not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records and has denied Daniels’ claims.
Watch the segment with Wallace in the video above.
