Krauthammer: Trump’s MSNBC Tweet’ What It Sounds Like When You’re Living in a Banana Republic’

On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” columnist Charles Krauthammer stated that President Trump’s tweet about MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski sounds like something from a banana republic and is how Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte would talk about their opponents.

Krauthammer said, “[I]t degrades the political discourse and it embarrasses the country. Presidents — [Senator] Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) I think, was right. Presidents don’t talk like this. They never have. This is what it sounds like when you’re living in a banana republic. This is how Hugo Chavez would talk about his opponents. This is how the worst dictator, Duterte, in the Philippines, would talk about opponents. It’s degrading and it sort reduces the United States from a grand republic to a banana republic.”

Fellow panelist Mercedes Schlapp responded that while she didn’t like the tweet, Trump isn’t sending in the military to shut down the press, Trump has a right to state his opinion, and “Morning Joe” isn’t objective.

Krauthammer countered, “When you defend the president of the United States by pointing out that he hasn’t sent the tanks out in the streets to shut down the media, you’ve reached a fairly low level of defense. I’m talking about the tone and the degrading of the politics, and that is on the level of Hugo Chavez.”

He added, “[T]weeting is the most direct avenue to the id. There’s no more uncensored, unfiltered avenue from the id to tweeting, and what we’re seeing is we’re getting a look into the psyche of the president. And what we’re seeing is a vindictiveness, a cruelty, a lack of temperateness, a lack of self-control, which is truly shocking.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett