Onetime vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin took a jab at former high-profile Republicans who have since joined anti-Trump causes or landed jobs on cable news networks, calling them “yahoos” who are only self-interested.
“Oh, go ahead and single them out,” Palin said of Steve Schmidt during an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program Wednesday night. “He’s a piece of work. So is Nicole Wallace and those other yahoos, who were actually running the McCain-Palin campaign … A couple of them didn’t even vote for the ticket. They jumped ship early in terms of their actual enthusiasm for Republicans to be elected that year in ’08, and that’s evidenced by what their doing today.”
Schmidt is an MSNBC contributor and a founding member of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump PAC made up of former Republican establishment donors and operatives. The group has endorsed Democrat Joe Biden for president.
“Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had, and I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president,” Schmidt said in June. “And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.”
Wallace was the communications director for former President George W. Bush and worked on his reelection campaign in 2004. Today, he is a host on MSNBC and regularly attacks President Trump and his allies.
“The right isn’t running an intellectually honest operation to get to the bottom of whether Tara Reade was victimized,” Wallace said of allegations of sexual assault against Biden. “The right is running a smear campaign against Joe Biden.”
Palin accused former Republicans, including Schmidt and Wallace, of sabotaging her and the late Sen. John McCain’s bid for the White House in 2008.
“[They are] wolves in sheep’s clothing, and there has been huge exposure,” Palin said. “Those of us who were kind of victims of what they’re capable of, it’s kind of vindication for us cause it’s like, ‘See, told you so. They were never on our team to start with.'”
