MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace Warns of GOP ‘Threat’ to Democracy, Suggests Foreign Countries ‘Monitor’ U.S. Elections

MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace suggested it may be time “to ask for friends and allies to come over and help us monitor our elections” on a segment this week, claiming America “used to do that in other burgeoning and threatened democracies,” as she warned of the “threats” to democracy posed by Republicans.

Sitting with Congressman Jim Himes (D-CT) on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” on Monday, host Nicolle Wallace discussed alleged internal and external threats to upcoming U.S. elections while stressing the need for “reliable safeguards against ever present national security threats.”

“That includes the elected members of Congress with intelligence and oversight roles, whose fears were confirmed by the stunning Washington Post reporting on Friday about what the twice-impeached and now-subpoenaed ex-president had brought home with him to Mar-A-Lago,” she said.

Turning to the Connecticut Congressman, Wallace claimed, “We’re so focused on our own pretty splendid efforts to destroy our democracy from the Republican Party in this country that we forget that they’re foreign actors that represent a grave threat as well.”

Himes, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, responded by saying he worries “kind of more about the domestic stuff than some of what I see in the intelligence committee.”

Claiming that threats to the country’s upcoming midterm elections “are so pervasive, and they’re so dire, and they include violence,” Wallace asked her guest whether he thought foreign intervention was necessary.

“I mean, do you think it’s time to ask for friends and allies to come over and help us monitor our elections?” she asked. “We used to do that in other burgeoning and threatened democracies.”

Claiming he’s “not there yet,” Himes replied, “I know why you’re asking what you’re asking and you’re not wrong.” 

“You know the kind of intimidation that is threatened around polling places,” he said. “I mean, you’ve seen the pictures of the guys with assault weapons near boxes.” 

“That stuff is intimidating, and again that used to be sort of the province of — I hate to use the term — third-world countries that didn’t care about democracy,” he added.

Himes also suggested that “at some point the United States is going to need to collectively decide that not only are we going to oppose Russians and Chinese and North Koreans and Iranians messing around with our elections, we’re not going to allow the Republican Party to do it either.”

“And one of the most effective things we can do to take an awful lot of the vulnerabilities off the table, of course, would be to pass the Electoral Count Act in the United States Congress because that deals with a lot of the levers that they tried to use after Donald Trump was defeated in November of ‘20,” he added. 

Wallace then asked Himes for his opinion on why Republicans “aren’t as worried about what Donald Trump took to Mar-a-Lago as Democrats are,” in reference to alleged classified documents found at the former president’s Florida estate. 

“Well, it’s not that they’re not as worried, they’re just a lot less willing to talk about it… because if you attract the attention of Donald Trump, it’s game over,” he said, adding that Republicans “know what they would say if Hillary Clinton had been found with top secret SCI information in her home in New York State.” 

The MSNBC host and former White House communications director then asked Himes if he thought Donald Trump’s presidency “is sort of farther in the rearview mirror” and that he can finally be “purge[d]” from “the pollution that he ushered in” around national security.

The incumbent Congressman responded by highlighting what he deemed “an unbroken string of losses” on the part of the former president, including losing the House and the Senate.

“But a lot of what my Republican colleagues think of the future of Donald Trump politically will have to do with what happens in the election that is coming up in two weeks,” he said. 

“You know, again, if he continues his almost unbroken streak of losing… you know Republicans don’t ever want to be in the crosshairs of Donald Trump,” he concluded. “They also don’t really like to lose.”

Earlier this month, Wallace accused Republicans of “not just destroying democracy in the dark, breaking into election offices and plugging stuff in, [but] we’re watching them do it from rally stages, debate stages,” and claimed there was “rot” in white women who voted for Trump.

In June, Wallace said it seems “obvious” domestic violent extremists were a part of the right’s voting coalition.

In April, she described congressional Republicans as a “threat to national security.”