MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace is under fire for making a derogatory comment Thursday about first lady Melania Trump and first daughter Ivanka, asking if they are “dead inside” or simply being “paid off.”
On her show "Deadline: White House" Wallace pondered how women close to the president cope with the ongoing allegations surrounding adult film star Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had a consensual sexual encounter with Trump over a decade ago (Trump denies the allegation).
“Are they just the most stoic human beings, are they numb, are they dead inside, are they paid off, I mean, what’s their deal?” Wallace asked.
The comment was immediately panned across social media and by conservative commentators.
Political commentator Britt McHenry told Fox News that feminists and liberal women champion women’s rights, unless those women disagree with their politics.
“This is yet another example,” McHenry said. “Ivanka and Melania can’t win with the media. If they show too much emotion, they’re ‘not taking the White House serious enough.’ If they don’t show much emotion, apparently now they’re stoic and cold.”
Independent Women’s Forum senior editor Charlotte Hays sarcastically asked, Does Ivanka Trump, who had a successful business career before joining her father's administration, strike you as ‘dead inside?’"
Hays continued, "what about Melania Trump, who valiantly rises above it all, even when the media pursues her with baseless tales of domestic abuse, because she had had the nerve to withdraw from the public eye long enough to recuperate from kidney surgery? Is there any evidence that our gracious first lady is ‘dead inside?’"
One Twitter user responded to the video by saying Wallace “needs help,” calling it a “dark conversation.”
McHenry said that American people see through Wallace’s comments as petty and inconsequential.
“Perhaps, someone doesn’t like the Trump family. But it’s becoming easy for people to pick sides that the media has drawn when outlets like that continue to be unnecessarily salacious and cruel,” McHenry said.
Earlier this week, President Trump sent a tweet regarding widespread media speculation over first lady Melania Trump’s recent absence from the public eye after treatment for a kidney condition.
“The Fake News Media has been so unfair, and vicious, to my wife and our great First Lady, Melania. During her recovery from surgery they reported everything from near death, to facelift, to left the W.H. (and me) for N.Y. or Virginia, to abuse. All Fake, she is doing really well!” Trump tweeted.
Wallace wasn’t the only MSNBC host to make outlandish comments about the Trump family in the past 24 hours. On Friday, Stephanie Ruhle questioned if President Trump was prepared to meet North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un by bringing up a variety of incidents, alleged and otherwise, while ignoring his entire political and business resumes.
When trying to determine what had prepared Trump for the upcoming meeting, she asked, “When you appeared in a Playboy softcore porn movie? Was it when you body-slammed Vince McMahon, the head of the World Wrestling Federation? Or, was it when you were leaking information, when you were disguising yourself as your own PR guy, talking to tabloids about what a great lover you were?”