Nicolle Wallace is a political analyst and host at MSNBC, but she brought her experience as White House communications director for President George W. Bush to Tuesday's Late Night. President Trump is giving his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, and Seth Meyers asked Wallace how a White House prepares. "We didn't usually have high expectations," she said, laughing. "I love Bush — he wasn't known for these soaring rhetorical skills," but his speeches were "thoughtful" and well-prepared.
Trump's speeches are divisive, Wallace said, and this year his team is "on their knees, they're in such a position of weakness, he's going to have to do something to sort of shake up his own political standing." Meyers found that idea "terrifying," but he was amused by the thought of Trump giving the State of the Union address looking over his shoulder at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
"That relationship is so interesting," Wallace said. Pelosi "became speaker while my old boss was still president, and so I've been to this movie, I know how it ends — well for her, not well for the Republican president. ... She can do what really no one else in either party can do: She can hold her party together," Wallace added, and it's crazy no one in Trumpworld studied up on her prowess.
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Meyers turned to 2020, suggesting that Trump's "the person most likely to be distracted by the 2020 election." "Of course, and it won't even be the substantive attacks on ... the cruelty and the vapidness of his policy and his tweets," Wallace said. "It will be the person with the biggest crowds. So [Sen.] Kamala [Harris (D-Calif)] should be the person that Democrats are most excited about — she has the thing that scares him the most: the biggest crowd." Meyers joked that Trump is "probably just sitting there trying to come up with a nickname for her right now." Watch below. Peter Weber
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