Sarah Matthews, an ex-White House aide to Donald Trump, took on the current administration’s “gaslighting” on Friday after the president boosted a social media post calling for the execution of Democrats in Congress.
″[It’s] mind-boggling but not surprising,” said Matthews in an appearance on MS NOW.
In addition to Trump sharing a Truth Social user’s call to “HANG THEM” in response to Democratic veterans urging military members to refuse unlawful orders, he declared that “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR” was “punishable by DEATH” in another post.
Matthews — a White House deputy press secretary in Trump’s first term who resigned after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — said it’s “absolutely insane” that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and other Trump officials are defending the post.
“If this was any other president, we would be having conversations about the 25th Amendment if they were calling for the opposing party — members of the opposing party, to be hanged,” Matthews said.
She countered Leavitt for claiming that the Democrats could incite violence due to their video.
“To me, it looks like the president is the one very clearly inciting violence here,” Matthews said.
She also pointed to politicians and others talking about a need to “tone down the rhetoric” in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
“But instead the president is the one who keeps continuing to just ratchet it up,” she said.
Matthews added that it’s “really shameful” that Republicans are “sane-washing” Trump’s posts instead of “very clearly” condemning them as all lawmakers should.
“It really does speak to how we are so divided as a country and how Trump has just normalized this type of rhetoric and desensitized us as Americans that this is acceptable because it’s not,” she continued.
Check out more of MS NOW’s segment on Trump’s posts below.