MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace went on CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to talk about politics, and she revealed that while she had left the Republican party, her parents were still big fans of President Trump.
“My parents think Donald Trump belongs on Mount Rushmore,” Wallace told the CBS host. The MSNBC host mentioned her parents after Colbert asked how Kellyanne Conway and George Conway stay married despite their very public disagreements over the Trump presidency.
“I live this sort of need to sort of understand and understand that people have different views about Donald Trump. So I’ve got no judgment on that,” she added. “I think that if transparency is the disinfectant, they’re both sort of living their political views out loud.”
While Wallace said she is understanding of her parent’s views, she had harsh words for Republicans who still support Trump. “If I had any capacity for sympathy for my old party, it would be so sad, it would be embarrassing. But I don’t,” she told Colbert after the host brought up a clip of her calling several Fox News personalities “chickenshit.”
The cable host has said she would support any Democrat in 2020 to take down Trump, who she has compared to Adolf Hitler. She has praised South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg as “chicken soup for my soul.”
Wallace, 47, is a former Republican who worked as George W. Bush’s communications director during his presidency. During the 2008 presidential election, she served as a senior adviser to Sarah Palin, who was Sen. John McCain’s vice-presidential pick.
Wallace went on to co-host The View in 2015 before joining MSNBC as a full-time host and renounced being a Republican. She said she told Jeb Bush that “he should have punched” Trump for his treatment in one of the 2016 Republican primary debates.
She regularly invites anti-Trump and former Republicans on her show, including Charlie Sykes, Steve Schmidt, and David Frum. Some conservatives refer to her show as the “traitor hour” on MSNBC. Wallace still praises Republicans such as McCain and Bush but said, “that’s about it” in regards to Republicans she still respects.
Earlier this year, she divorced her husband, Mark Wallace, of 14 years and started dating Michael Schmidt, a New York Times reporter.
