MSNBC pundit claims Trump supporters are 'despicable,' ungenerous, have no compassion or empathy

Progressive pundit Elie Mystal joined MSNBC's Joy Reid to talk about how awful they think Donald Trump is, and for good measure, they threw in his supporters as well. When asked by Reid why Trump's career hasn't ended over the many "despicable" things he's done, such as talking about buildings he's built in New York, or joining Gold Star families for a memorial at Arlington National Cemetary, Mystal said that it's "because his supporters are just as despicable."

"Also to do things Elie, that one would think are career-ending the way he desecrated Arlington National Cemetery would be career-ending for a normal politician, but his constant lies," Reid said. "But even this piece about saying, 'Well, my building was the tallest until, you know, they brought down the World Trade Center. Now it's a second tallest.' I mean, everything he does is despicable."

"The reason why it doesn't end his career is because his supporters are just as despicable," Mystal said. "All right? Like Trump's whole thing, he's a narcissist, right? And so his whole thing is to have a complete lack of compassion and empathy for everybody else. It's all about him. That's why he lies about 9/11 it's all about him, him, him, me, me, me. It's— he's probably the least compassionate president we've had in 200 years since Andrew Jackson."

"And it works for him because his supporters are just as ungenerous and have just as little compassion and empathy for others," Mystal continued. "So when he is seen out there, essentially, as you guys have put it, desecrating our national symbols, when he is seen out there, putting himself above all else, his supporters also want that to be the case. They want to do that in their own lives. They want— that's how they think of themselves, and that's why it never hurts Trump when he takes these crass and classless actions, it's because his supporters think that being crass and classless is actually kind of cool."

"Yeah, they— also he hates the people they hate," Reid said, asserting that Trump's claim that there were Muslims who were glad to see the Twin Towers fall on September 11, 2001 was false.

It was later reported by NJ.com that in fact there were "small pockets of people celebrating before the groups dispersed or were broken up by authorities." This was based on police officer accounts from the time. "Collectively, the gatherings amounted to dozens of people at the two locations, the witnesses said. Callers also flooded the 911 system with accounts of jubilant Muslims on a rooftop at a third location, three police officers said, but a reporter was unable to find witnesses there 14 years later," the outlet reported in 2015.

They further reported the account of retired police captain Peter Gallagher, who "said he cleared a rooftop celebration of 20 to 30 people at 6 Tonnele Ave., a four-story apartment building with an unobstructed view of Lower Manhattan, in the hours after the second tower fell."

"Some men were dancing, some held kids on their shoulders," said Gallagher to NJ.com in 2015. "The women were shouting in Arabic and keening in the high-pitched wail of Arabic fashion. They were told to go back to their apartments since a crowd of non-Muslims was gathering on the sidewalk below and we feared for their safety."