President Donald Trump’s hate-filled tweets about Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski’s physical appearance have practically united Congress members on both sides of the aisle in utter disgust. Network competitors like CNN’s Chris Cuomo and Jake Tapper have come to her defense. The only prominent figures defending Trump’s words seem to be members of the Huckabee family and, of course, Sean Hannity.
But if there is one cable news reaction that has outdone the rest on Thursday, it has to be CNN Republican strategist—and frequent Trump critic—Ana Navarro. “I’m anxious, Ana, to hear what your thoughts are,” Wolf Blitzer said by way of introduction Thursday afternoon. And so were we.
“Look, when I first saw the tweet this morning I was frankly disgusted and thought to myself, this dude has such a fixation with women and blood. What is wrong with him? And then you remember that this disgusting dude is the president of the United States. And you realize just how much he is diminishing the presidency of the United States. You realize that what he is doing is not just acting for Donald Trump, he's acting for all of us.”
“He is embarrassing, he is shameful, he is disgusting,” Navarro continued, before pointing the finger at fellow members of her own party. “I’ll say this about Republicans. I'm really tired of hearing words like ‘disappointed,’ like ‘disturbed,’ like ‘I'm bothered,’ like ‘I wish he wouldn't do it.’” Instead, she said Republicans in Congress should go on television and say, “Listen, you crazy, lunatic 70-year-old man baby, stop it! You are now the president of United States, the commander-in-chief, and you need to stop acting like a mean girl.”
She said there’s no point talking about substantive issues because she “can’t get past the fact” that we have a president “mean,” “nasty,” “immature, unstable and asks like a crazy person with anybody who attacks him because he has thin skin and he is never going to pivot and anybody around him, whether his daughter, his chief of staff, his wife, who I remind you had said her signature issue was going to be fighting against online bullies, or any Republican on the Hill.”
“Stop enabling him!” she implored. “Confront this and confront this hard, or it will never stop, and it will embarrass all of us. It will take the presidency low, low, low.”
This is a message that Navarro has been pushing since long before Trump took office, dating back to when the infamous “grab ‘em by the pussy” tape was released last October. When Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes told Navarro at the time to stop saying the word “pussy” on CNN, she shot back, “Don't tell me you're offended when I say ‘pussy,’ but you're not offended when Donald Trump says it. I'm not running for president, he is.”