Legendary GOP Strategist Thrashes Tucker Carlson for Claiming to Be a ‘Patriot’ While Kissing Up to Hungarian Autocrat

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace and panel examined the “march towards autocracy” by right-wing figures in America during Friday’s “Deadline: White House.

“What we have seen from Republican state and federal officials, as well as the nightly rantings on right-wing media, demonstrate what democracies are not,” Wallace said.

Wallace singled out Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who is broadcasting this week from Hungary and giving glowing coverage to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whom Wallace noted “is known the world over for his rollback of democratic practices.”

For analysis, Wallace interviewed legendary GOP ad maker Mark McKinnon, who was the chief media strategist for multiple successful Republican presidential campaigns. McKinnon is also co-host of Showtime’s “The Circus.”

“You and I have a history of working for Republicans who had critics really on both sides of the ideological spectrum, especially George W. Bush, but who lived and breathed their faith in democracy like their own faith,” Wallace said. “They were both men of strong religious faith, but they — their whole thing was about our democracy and they managed to bring along a lot of Republicans at the time.”

“I find it unbearable to watch the likes of Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Rob Portman (R-OH) and Roy Blunt (R-MO) and all of those guys, they’re largely guys who were there, look the other way as Republicans try to damage and roll back the central tenet of our democracy,” Wallace said.

“You know, it is one thing for Satan to do what he does — we’ve come to expect that — but who I really hold responsible are Satan’s are enablers,” McKinnon said.

“The hypocrisy and the irony of people like Tucker Carlson going to autocratic countries, there’s a whole up is down, down is up element of all of this, which is Republicans love to run around — particularly Trump Republicans — saying, ‘I’m more patriotic than you are, you’re not American,’ and yet these are the people overturning the Constitution, creating an act of insurrection at the Capitol, going and visit autocrats in autocrat countries,” he explained.

“Meanwhile, the Republicans who demanded 33 hearings on Benghazi don’t want to have one hearing on a domestic event where more life loss, when you include the suicides, than Benghazi,” he noted.

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