“MSNBC Live” co-hosts Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle on Thursday took an adviser to President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign to task for dodging their questions and questioning their bona fides.
“What exactly about infrastructure, of which we need a trillion dollars of investment, on which we are given a D-plus rating by the American Society of Civil Engineers, what about infrastructure requiring public-private partnerships is helped by an executive order about permitting?” Velshi asked Trump campaign adviser Brad Thomas. “That is just simplistic. You know that.”
“There is no infrastructure bill,” Ruhle added.
“Look, it’s just very complicated,” Thomas replied. “I know this is not your background, so it may be harder for you to understand—”
“What are you talking about, Brad?” both Velshi and Ruhle fired back.
“It is far more our background than it is yours,” Velshi said.
“Brad, I spent 14 years in investment banking,” Ruhle added.
“Yeah, no, I don’t — I’m sorry,” Thomas said, shaking his head and smiling.
“You can’t just lie on TV, Brad. You can’t just lie on TV,” Velshi said. “I don’t know if your people told you who you were coming on TV with, but you can’t lie about the economy to us.”
“I’m not lying about the economy. And the market’s speaking for itself,” Thoms said. “Again, I’m telling you the number one catalyst that will move this market is corporate tax. That is it.”
“And what leads you to believe we’re going to have corporate tax reform?” Ruhle interjected. “Because in order to do so the President would need to be working with GOP leadership. And last I checked he’s donkey-kicking them on Twitter.”
“You know, I don’t — I wouldn’t believe that at all,” Thomas replied. “I mean, I certainly — there’s a lot of people working hard, extremely hard, including myself, to initiate this corporate tax plan.”
Thomas said he was “amazed” to see CEOs leaving Trump’s business council, which the President then disbanded in an apparent attempt to beat them to it.
“If I were a publicly traded CEO today and I’ve watched my shares of my company generate the gains we’ve seen since January 1st, I would be amazed,” he said. “Especially because we haven’t been talking about this catalyst, because the mainstream media doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s not true,” Ruhle retorted. “Ali and I talk about it all of the time.”
“You should fire your press person,” Velshi added. “Between the two of us, we’ve been doing this for about 50 years, okay? So let’s just — this is a silly conversation to have with us. You should go to other people’s media and say these things, but not to us. We cover this every day, in and out.”
