Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox
Get our free Inside Washington email
Get our free Inside Washington email
MAGA pundits and right-wing influencers are apoplectic over Nicolle Wallace’s comments about President Donald Trump making a 13-year-old brain cancer survivor an honorary Secret Service agent, calling for the MSNBC host to be fired over her “deranged” and “repulsive” remarks.
Midway through his joint address to Congress on Tuesday night, the president acknowledged DJ Daniel, who was dressed in a police uniform in the gallery alongside his father. Noting that Daniel had always dreamed of being a police officer, Trump said that the young teen was a pediatric cancer survivor who had beaten his diagnosis.
“In 2018 DJ was diagnosed with brain cancer. The doctors gave him five months at most to live. That was more than six years ago,” Trump said to loud applause, before surprising Daniel with another announcement.
“Police departments love him. And tonight, DJ, we’re going to do you the biggest honor of them all. I am asking our new Secret Service director, Sean Curran, to officially make you an agent of the United States Secret Service,” the president declared while Daniel’s eyes grew wide.
Following the president’s nearly two-hour speech — the longest ever before a joint session of Congress — Wallace and MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow took exception to what they felt was the president exploiting and politicizing Daniel’s cancer survival.
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace is drawing conservative outrage over comments she made about Donald Trump honoring a 13-year-old cancer survivor at his joint address to Congress. (MSNBC)
“For the record — and this is disgusting — the president made a spectacle out of praising a young man who’s thus far survived pediatric cancer, as if the president had something to do with that,” Maddow stated while going through a lengthy fact-check of Trump’s speech. “This was in the midst of him praising DOGE. The DOGE cuts, among other things, have cut off funding for ongoing research into pediatric cancer.”
Following her progressive colleague’s rundown of the president’s address, Wallace went further in her criticism of the president honoring Daniel on Tuesday night by framing it within Trump’s blanket pardons of Capitol rioters who attacked police officers.
Calling it a “genuinely beautiful moment” in which she “allowed herself to feel joy,” the former George W. Bush communications director claimed that the experience was marred by the actions the Trump administration is currently taking.
“Problem is, in the beauty of that child is the tragedy of the Trump presidency, because we don’t know how he survived pediatric cancer, but it is likely he benefited from some sort of cancer research,” Wallace stated. “And it is a fact that Trump has slashed cancer research. It’s a fact, by eliminating NIH and by all the cuts, pediatric cancer trials are halted.”
At the same time, the Deadline: White House host brought up Trump’s pardons of the January 6 defendants to express concern for Daniel if he ever does end up serving in law enforcement.
“I hope he has a long life as a law enforcement officer, but 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,” she declared. “And I hope he isn’t one that has to testify against the people who carried out acts of seditious conspiracy and then lived to see Donald Trump pardon those people.”
It didn’t take long for outraged Trump supporters to blast Wallace online over her “sickening” commentary while accusing her of “politicizing” a moment from a highly partisan political speech.
“This is genuinely the most repulsive comment I’ve heard in a very long time from anyone on television,” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk raged, adding: “MSNBC should fire Nicolle Wallace. Disgusting.”
Megyn Kelly’s executive producer Steve Krakauer labeled Wallace’s remarks the “most odious thing” he’s ever heard on cable news. “Totally broken-brained punditry,” he tweeted.
Former Georgia state representative Vernon Jones decried Wallace as a “liberal racist piece of sh*t” while also urging MSNBC to “fire her effective immediately,” while far-right provacateur Ian Miles Cheong fumed that the MSNBC star was “unhinged.” Other conservative social media personalities, meanwhile, described her as “deranged” and “depraved.”
A representative for MSNBC declined to comment.
