"There Has Never Been An Administration Like This"

Steve Schmidt is a Republican. He was the senior campaign advisor to John McCain in 2008, and has also worked on the campaigns of Arnold Schwarzenegger and George W. Bush. But he is also a rarity -- an honest Republican.

Here is what he told MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace about the mess the Trump administration has made out of the Rob Portman wife-beating scandal:

The story imploded today like it was a building implosion or stadium implosion you were watching on tv. What happened here is that the FBI came back and they said, ‘hey, the staff secretary who has a code-word SCI top-secret clearance is credibly accused of beating his two wives.’ And the White House took no action, kept him in place.

We see the abject incompetence that was described in the Michael Wolff book. We see recklessness around national security issues, scores of west wing officials don’t have the requisite clearances necessary to see the nation’s most closely guarded secrets. 

We see the usual dishonesty and it’s blowing up in their face. And lastly, we see the cruelty. The cruelty of the press secretary toward these women. Of Kellyanne Conway toward these women. Of the President of the United States toward these women. And really, the whole of the administration toward these women.

I think the important thing to understand, to remember, for the American people, is that this is not normal. This is — there’s never been an administration like this. In fact, when you look out across all the western democracies, you don’t see lying like this. the constancy of lying, the dishonesty, the allegations of conspiracy, the smearing, the defend-to-the-end at all costs the image and the reputation of the leader.

There’s never been anything like this. We are in a — we are in unchartered territory with this comportment and it’s vile. The behavior is disgraceful, it’s disgusting.

The country has never before now elected somebody who is so manifestly unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, for the office of President of the United States.