Karoline Leavitt calls out Nicolle Wallace, ‘legacy media’ over reaction to Trump’s congressional address
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said it is ‘sad and frankly pathetic’ that Democrats and members of the media put their ‘hatred’ of President Trump over the American people.
“I hope he’s alive for another 95 years and I hope he lives the life he wants to live. I hope he never has to defend the United States Capitol against Donald Trump’s supporters, and if he does, I hope he isn’t one of the six who loses his life to suicide.“
That was MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on Tuesday night, making some of the most odious comments one could imagine involving a 13-year-old cancer survivor who had just been honored by President Donald Trump during his address to the Joint Session of Congress.
13-YEAR-OLD CANCER SURVIVOR EARNS STANDING OVATION AS HE BECOMES SECRET SERVICE AGENT DURING TRUMP SPEECH
DJ Daniel, who was given just five months to live five years ago, has since endured 13 brain surgeries and all the complications and pain that went along with the attempts to beat this hideous disease. But he endured, and has openly expressed his desire to one day serve in law enforcement.
Devarjay “DJ” Daniel visited the White House to meet with President Donald Trump on March 5, 2025. (The White House)
This is the kind of story that is pure Americana: Boy arbitrarily faces a death sentence at the age of eight. He fights through, beats all odds, and one night, years later on national TV, the sitting president declares him an honorary member of the Secret Service on the biggest stage for any live event outside of the Super Bowl.
It was a moment in which we should have all put our politics aside in the name of all that is good and inspiring in the world.
But on Tuesday night, in what was one of the most shocking and inhumane moments one will witness on national television, Democrats, save for one lawmaker, sat on their hands while Republicans roared for DJ as his father held him up in his arms.
It was the type of moment that won’t go away with the next news cycle, either. Democrats couldn’t even let their Trump Derangement Syndrome go for one minute to cheer for DJ, and even some of their own party members and allies in the media are eviscerating them for it.
One would think, therefore, that the former communications director during another Republican White House administration would know better, given her experience in media and messaging, than to attempt to connect DJ back to the Capitol Riots of January 6 and police suicides.
But there went Nicolle Wallace as even her MSNBC panelists looked on almost in disbelief.
The backlash was swift, with Trump calling for Wallace, along with co-“anchor” Rachel Maddow, to be fired. Maddow also decided it was a fine time to turn Trump honoring the boy into an attack line, somehow calling the moment “disgusting.”
Both opinion hosts, who are tapped to serve as lead anchors during big events, have rightly been the subject of mass condemnation for days on social media.
MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Nicolle Wallace appeared on MSNBC’s post-address coverage. (MSNBC)
But for Wallace especially, this was not a one-off, or one of those situations where she said something on live TV she’d want a do-over for. Just a few weeks ago, the former co-host of “The View” compared Trump’s immigration policy to the Holocaust.
This kind of rhetoric goes back years to Trump’s first term. Here’s one doozy from 2017:
“He’s now given safe harbor to Nazis, to white supremacists, what he’s done now is something you can’t put back in the toothpaste tube,” Wallace said at the time. “He’s so disgraced not just the Republican Party, but the country. People with kids can’t watch TV with their kids anymore.”
But like the boy who cried wolf, the TDS girl who cried Nazi for eight years isn’t being listened to much anymore, especially since Trump’s victory on Nov. 5.
Audiences for her program have fallen 35%, despite made-for-cable-news, insanely unpredictable and often entertaining news cycles. Wallace is barely registering one million total viewers per night. In the key 25-54 demo, she is now averaging under 100,000 viewers, which is smaller than the population of Davenport, Iowa.
So that’s the question: Can a program so blindly myopic, so devoid of anything objective, and a program that is hosted by someone who couldn’t even resist attacking Trump when a young cancer survivor being honored was broached, ever attract a respectable audience again?
The cable news TDS isn’t limited to Wallace, or even her far-left network, and viewers are voting with their remote controls. Fox News Channel, for example, has more Democrats watching it than MSNBC or CNN, according to Nielsen MRI Fusion data.
In the 18 and over demo, Fox brings in 427,000 Democratic voters on average, while MSNBC brings in just 255,000. In the key 25-54 demo, Fox averages 54,000 Democrat viewers while MSNBC attracts just 18,000 Dems, or less than the capacity of Madison Square Garden.
Again, these are Democrat-voting viewers we’re talking about.
As expected, Wallace has not apologized or even acknowledged her remarks. Management is also mum. The hope, it appears, is that the controversy simply washes away.
In the days and months to follow, Wallace will continue to provide unhinged plant-based meat for her shrinking audience.
But the act is already getting old and further disconnected from the general public. A CBS poll taken after Trump’s address, for example, found 76% approved of the speech, while a CNN poll clocked in at 69% approval.
For Wallace and Maddow to be truly successful, both will need to expand the diversity of their audiences. And we’re not talking about race, gender or sexual orientation, but the diversity of thought, of ideas, of debate.
But the odds of that happening for Wallace and her cohorts are slim. DJ may have beaten cancer, but the prognosis for MSNBC’s acute case of Trump Derangement Syndrome is grim.
