MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace: I told Jeb Bush ‘he should have punched’ Trump ‘in the face’

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace said on Thursday that she told then-presidential candidate Jeb Bush that “he should have punched” President Trump “in the face” after one of the 2016 election primary debates. 

The revelation came during Wallace’s “Deadline: White House” program as she discussed the feud between Trump and the former Florida governor that escalated in several heated debates in 2015 and early 2016 before Bush was forced to drop out of the race. 

“Let me tell you, that Jeb Bush moment on that stage, if any of the Republicans on that stage backed Jeb Bush up when he went after Trump and called him out, it would be a very different—,” former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said before Wallace interjected. 

“I told Jeb Bush after the debate that I thought he should have punched him in the face,” Wallace said.

“Even if you lost, he insulted your wife, he came down the escalator and called Mexicans rapists and murderers. He said, ‘What do you think I should have done?’ I said, ‘I think you should have punched him in the face and then gotten out of the race. You would have been a hero.’”

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace says she encouraged Jeb Bush to physically attack Donald Trump: “I told Jeb Bush after that debate that I thought he should have punched [Trump] in the face.”

Wallace says Bush would have been “a hero” if he would have violently attacked Trump. pic.twitter.com/VT7aBWJTMq

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) October 11, 2018

Donald Trump Jr. responded to Wallace on Twitter. 

“Is anyone shocked that the left wants people to resort to violence?” the president’s eldest son wrote to his more than 3 million followers.

Is anyone shocked that the left wants people to resort to violence? https://t.co/hqGzCUgrSL

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 11, 2018

Wallace served as the White House communications director under President George W. Bush and in his 2004 reelection campaign. She was also a senior adviser to the late John McCain (R-Ariz.) when he ran for president in 2008. 

But she has been one of President Trump’s staunchest critics on MSNBC. 

Conservatives have slammed prominent Democratic party members in recent days, including former Secretary of State and 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and former Attorney General Eric Holder, for public comments that they said could incite violence.

On Tuesday, Clinton told CNN that “the time for civility is over” when confronting the GOP, while Holder, who is mulling a 2020 presidential run, said when Republicans go low, “we kick them,” in reference to former first lady Michelle Obama who once said, “When they go low, we go high.”

Democrats argue the president has not been exemplary in its rhetoric, pointing to Trump supporters earlier in the week chanting “Lock her up,” when he broached Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) role in Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process during a rally earlier this week.