New Day's John Avlon is doing a slow simmer over how the media covers Trump's outrageous statements.
"Donald Trump is running into the checks and balances that come with divided government. And you are going to see an epic conflict between the executive and Congress," Avlon said.
"And it's going to be fascinating to watch. The president's going to be playing to the base as he did this weekend. and the danger, of course, is that we've all become a bit numb to it. That there's a normalization from it. From the president's speech over the weekend, over two hours long, any number of those sound bites would previously have dominated, you know, a week of coverage and questions about whether the president was well, from using the phrase B.S. for the first time in public to saying that members of Congress hate our country.
"And they're all sort of taken with trump being performance art, he's being an insult comic. But there's something cold and hard about the congressional oversight and the inquiries they're going to be getting, and that's where to pay attention to."
"I want to come back to Congress in a minute, but I know the CPAC speech did bug you so i want to give you a chance to say more about what got under your skin there," John Berman said.
"Our coverage has been tweeting the president in his own universe, he's not being judged against the standards of previous presidents. And individual statements that would normally dominate headlines are swept under the rug of Trump being Trump. But it's not Trump being Trump when the president of the United States says members of Congress hate America. The first time on record the president has used the phrase B.S. and there's no shock quality to it, no commentary on it."
Alysin Camerota argued that we're already past that point.
"That's the danger of normalization," Avlon said. "That the president can say that members of the opposition party in Congress hate our country and we're treating it as just another Sunday. It's not. The reason you use history to analyze current events is because it imposes a sense of perspective. And if we buy into that normalization, we end up aiding and abetting the dumbing down of our democracy."
"I mean, I think there's a reason that he gave that sort of unhinged speech," said Joe Lockhart.
"One of the headlines out of the weekend from Nadler and Schiff is there are no red lines. They're going to go after everything, including his family. And I think that has him unnerved. So I agree with everything that John says, that this -- there's something very wrong here and we have to figure out a way to tackle it to give some context for how unhinged this is.
"But I also think on the other side of it, it's a reflection of just how nervous he is. The one thing we've found and we hear, you know, we hear from Washington reporters, you know, Maggie Haberman will come on and talk about who seems to have a thermometer on his mood, that it very much, very much has reflects what's on his mind."
