Donald Trump’s treasury secretary did not seem concerned about the President’s rhetoric at his Saturday night rally, despite several controversial comments on public figures including an African-American congresswoman and a network news anchor.
In Trump’s speech outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which lasted over an hour, the President called NBC News anchor Chuck Todd a “sleeping son of a bitch,” questioned the IQ of Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the r anking member on the House Financial Services Committee who has been a vocal critic of his administration, derided what he deemed the “fake news” media and floated the idea of giving drug dealers the death penalty. Even though Trump was in Western Pennsylvania to rally for Rick Saccone, the Republican candidate in the upcoming congressional special election, he revealed his own reelection slogan for 2020.
But in an interview with Todd Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Mnuchin dismissed this rhetoric, classifying it as “campaign rally issues.”
“He’s using these vulgarities in the context of a campaign rally and obviously there were a lot of funny moments on… that rally,” Mnuchin told Todd. When pressed specifically about Waters, Mnuchin replied that Trump had given nicknames to all of his Republican competitors in the presidential primary race.
“I’ve been with the president and, and at campaigns. You know he, he likes to put names on people. He did that through the entire presidential election,” Mnuchin said.
Todd never directly mentioned the President’s comments about him. But he did ask Mnuchin how he would explain the President’s use of vulgarities to his children — something he told NBC Washington Sunday was a challenge for him. Mnuchin said he was not concerned about that.
“I’ll be with my kids this morning, and I’ll be focused on them, on what the president is doing to protect the United States, its citizens, and more importantly its economy,” Mnuchin replied.