MSNBC host Joy Reid said Tuesday that Donald Trump’s cringey exchange with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) after winning New Hampshire proved he “wants to see his former opponents grovel.” (Watch the video below.)
As the former president attacked his defeated rival Nikki Haley, he turned to Scott, who had joined him on the stage.
“You must really hate her,” Trump said, referring to Scott’s endorsement of the criminally indicted GOP front-runner despite Haley appointing Scott to his Senate seat when she was governor of South Carolina.
Scott approached the microphone.
“I just love you,” Scott said.
“That’s why he’s a great politician!” Trump told the crowd.
Reid was not amused.
“Remember when he was president, one of the things he loved to do was to force people to ritually praise him or to ritually humiliate them? And I think that he saw this night as just a night to ritually humiliate people like Tim Scott,” she said. “Maybe Vivek [Ramaswamy] had to get up there and grovel. Like, literally, he just wants to see his former rivals grovel.”
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) called the display “pathetic” and conservative journalist Kimberly Ross called out Scott’s “embarrassing behavior.”
MSNBC host Chris Hayes chimed in that Trump invited Ramaswamy to speak but told him he had a time limit.
“Even when he said, ‘We’re gonna put one minute on the clock,’ it’s like, ‘I’m gonna make sure that you know your place,’” Hayes said, per Mediaite.