age, but for others it may be both age and/or experience we also saw trump release his first attack ad against biden since he has made his official announcement let s listen. the global elitist who send your kids to war, who tell you a woman is a man and a man is a woman, who teach your children their country, their faith, their beliefs are a lie. they have corrupted every facet of american government. the tone there rather dark. it sounds like something out of a motivate by fear play book that s not new for trump, of course, but do you think it s still effective? it is effective to mobilize traditionally performing republican voters. this is a president who gave us the american carnage speech. look at the heart of today s republicanism is that the elites and the big government and the diversity of culture is coming for your way of life they re trying to take away your way of life. that s the messaging you heard
white house, this president recognizes an opening in american life because in a way that is actually i think more tectonically significant than we realize the right has actually moved away from the freedom pitch in the trump era, that if you think about the american carnage speech, which i write about in the ink, donald trump mentions freedom once compared to the dozens of mentions you might expect in the reagan speech and it was really a different theory of the individual and the world. the american carnage speech was a speech about weak, vulnerable americans in a world of menacing, chaotic, intropic forces bearing down on them. and what was the implication you all need a strong protector from these forces. that was not reagan s pitch. reagan was not offering you a strong government protector. reagan s view of the individual was a kind of effacevescent free
weird this year, but, in fact, he was there. that s his crowd. you ve got to take them away from him if you re going to be the nominee. i don t see anybody doing that. joe, it s not just karl rove who talks about donald trump like that. it s people running against him in the race who say, well, he did a lot of good things. i don t want to criticize the former president. if you re not going to go after the guy you re running against, why are you in the race? but you talk to the republican establishment, and you talk to them behind the scenes. and they still will say, well, of course, if he s the nominee, we have to support him because joe biden, god, joe biden, a socialist. when you have donald trump again, they re acting like this is any other year. they re acting like this is 2012, like this is 2004. back to the carnage speech. you have a guy, you have a guy who is talking about calling people villains who didn t vote for him, saying, i am your retribution.
it was deadly serious. of course, she would never bring that up in her speech. so, you know, michael steele, it was you know, it was a good enough launch in 2008 or 2012. here we are in the middle of the age of trump, and, you know, new york times has a story about republican candidates afraid to mention donald trump s name. he is like lord voldemort. you have to mention his name and go after voldemort if you want to defeat him. they have to do the same thing with donald trump. they re just not going to do it. when they give this speech as if it is 2008 or 2012, everybody in the room is just sitting there waiting. you know, the elephant, the
for my fellow republicans. we ve lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. our cause is right, but we have failed to win the confidence of a majority of americans. well, that ends today. joining us now from charleston where nikki haley spoke yesterday is nbc news capitol hill correspondent ali vitali. good morning. what was the event like last night? how was nikki haley received? big crowd. paint the picture for us. reporter: yeah, willie, optically, it is exactly the kind of rollout that you want to have. if you listen to that speech there, you could almost imagine that this was a speech being given in the general election, which would be fine, except that we ve got a year and a half to go until we get there. nikki haley is nowhere close to taking on president biden at this point. instead, she has to go her only