MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday compared President Donald Trump to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Mediaite reported.
The segment's focus was on an NBC report that said Vice President Mike Pence over the summer counseled Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on ways to "ease tensions with" President Donald Trump, including being respectful of the president in meetings and in public.
Wallace played a video of her discussing the report with The Washington Post journalist Robert Costa, where Costa said he was not able to corroborate the details but said Pence is "known as someone who believes that publicly showering praise on the president and even doing so privately has its benefits for an administration that is based in many respects on loyalty as much as it is on policy agreement."
Wallace then turned to the panel of MSNBC contributors Charlie Sykes and Eugene Robinson and said: "Robert Costa could have been talking about North Korea there where people who are in service of the leader have to be trained and have to flatter the leader. It's remarkable. I never question Robert Costa's reporting, but it's a remarkable state of play that the vice president goes around and tells people how to shower the president with sufficient praise to stay out of his crosshairs."
Sykes in response said, "Trump is not that complicated."
"He likes people to suck up to him, who say positive things, and he will lash out at people who criticize him, and that formula is well known both domestically and in foreign policy," he said.
"That's where we are," Robinson responded. "And so, yes, we are at the dear leader phase of America where he's the dear leader or great leader. Those are your two options, and that's the way you have to treat it if you hope to serve in the administration."
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