The awkward, bizarre visual of low-energy House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) sharing one podium to deliver a response to President Donald Trump on Tuesday night was even too much for MSNBC host Brian Williams and Democrat operative James Carville to spin.
Both Williams and Carville openly mocked the Democrats during a late-night segment Tuesday. Williams flat out called the response “so bad” and Carville noted that he’s looked more enthused to get “colonoscopies” than Schumer looked at that podium.
Ouch.
“Tell me why responses are so bad,” Williams said to Carville. “Tonight, this Chuck and Nancy visual tonight launched 1,000 memes while they were still talking. There was an American gothic meme. There was ‘your mother and I are very upset you stayed out so late’ meme.”
Mentioning past poorly done response videos from the likes of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and former Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), Williams emphasized: “But this visual from tonight goes down in the pantheon.”
Carville said it was clear Schumer and Pelosi didn’t want to be there, though he noted that response videos like this “seldom, if ever, work.”
“He didn’t want to be there,” Carville said of Schumer specifically. “I’ve been more excited about colonoscopies than he was giving the speech tonight. He didn’t want to be there.”
Tossing back to Williams, the host further poked fun at the one-podium presentation.
“Hey, Michael,” Williams said to MSNBC analyst Michael Steele, a former RNC chairman, “the first thing people said on social media tonight was, it looked like the Democrats only had the one podium. These two people, both of great station and accomplishment, are sharing this little tiny, modest, wooden podium.”
“Dems, don’t do that again,” answered Steele. “You know, you don’t — I don’t know what they were trying to accomplish here. Certainly, the message was lost in the visual.”
During the awkward and visually comical rebuttal speech, Pelosi claimed Democrats want to “secure” the border, but refuse to fund Trump’s wall because a wall is apparently not in-line with American values. The Democrat has previously called the wall an “immorality.”
“We all agree that we need to secure our borders while honoring our values,” said the House Speaker. “We can build the infrastructure and roads at our ports of entry; we can install new technology to scan cars and trucks for drugs coming into our nation; we can hire the personnel we need to facilitate trade and immigration at the border; and we can fund more innovation to detect unauthorized crossings.”
Pelosi predictably blamed Trump for the current government shutdown, saying he’s “holding the American people hostage.”
After a cringe-inducing pass over to Schumer, the senator accused Trump of trying to “govern by temper tantrum.”
“No president should pound the table and demand he gets his way or else the government shuts down, hurting millions of Americans who are treated as leverage,” Schumer said.
Alternatively, President Trump blamed the Democrats for the government shutdown, which he said could be hammered out in a 45-minute meeting. The president emphasized the threat from porous borders to the American people and encouraged citizens to call Congress and demand funding for the Southern border wall.
WATCH:
H/t NewsBusters