Former Governor Martin O'Malley took Trump apart in a blistering new interview with MSNBC's Jose Diaz-Balart.
Here is the full video interview.
Excerpts from RCP:
What does that have to do with today's political climate? It means when people like Donald Trump speak in such hate-filled language about other human beings, scapegoat other human beings, as he has done with all Mexican-American immigrants, it gives license to people who are very concerned and very worried and very apprehensive about their own future and their children's future. And all of us in the public arena of this presidential campaign need to push back against Donald Trump and this sort of language. It's not funny, it's not entertaining, and it is unbecoming of the United States of America and the office of president...
O’MALLEY: Well, we've seen other examples of this in history, when people feel like their economic opportunities are declining, when people feel like they're not going to be able to give their children a better future. It becomes a very volatile political climate within which charlatans and unscrupulous so-called leaders can scapegoat other people and say that the reason you're not doing better is because people not like us, people like them, the others.
And we've seen this before. And now we're seeing it right now in our own country.
Look, if Donald Trump is such a big, tough guy, why is it that he takes on -- why is it that he takes on minimum wage workers? Why is it that he prevents minimum wage workers from even having labor unions? Why is that he says such denigrating things about new American immigrants and about women?
I don't find anything tough about Donald Trump at all. In fact, my parents taught us that this is not strength, this is weakness when you attack and you scapegoat other people and talk less of other human beings, as he has done in such hate-filled ways...
O’MALLEY: Look, if the current crop of Republicans in Congress were going to be persuaded by heavy-handed enforcement, by deportations without any discernment or further considerations of the impact of breaking up families, if Republicans were going to be persuaded by the numbers of women and children and families that we pen up behind barbed wire and chain link fence, then I think we would have reached that tipping point quite some time ago.
What we need to do, as a people, is forge a new consensus. If we want wages to go up again in our country, then let's get 11 million of our neighbors out of the underground economy and into the full light of an American economy where they can work on the books, make contributions to our country, make their families stronger, and thereby make our country stronger.
It's worth clicking through to watch the whole interview. Transcripts don't do it justice.
On a side note, is there anyway to embed MSNBC videos here?