
Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The on-air profanity was over a 'smear campaign' she said 'cable news' is directing at Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace called Fox News' Laura Ingraham — and apparently her guests John Yoo and Alan Dershowitz — "chickens**t" during a live broadcast Tuesday over what Wallace called a "smear campaign" by "cable news" against Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman.
Vindman, the National Security Council's top Ukraine expert, listened to a July phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine's president — and Vindman testified during a closed-door deposition Tuesday for Democrats' impeachment inquiry against Trump that he "was concerned" about what he heard on the call.
Wallace ran a series of clips showing members of the media criticizing Vindman, ending with Ingraham on Monday telling Yoo and Dershowitz that "here we have a U.S. National security official who is advising Ukraine while working inside the White House apparently against the president's interests, and usually they spoke in English. Isn't that kind of an interesting angle on this story?"
Yoo replied, "I find that astounding, and, you know, some people might call that espionage."
After the series of clips, Wallace remarked on air, “Except those people aren't chickens**t like the three of you, and they know that he passed a background check that the president's daughter and son-in-law didn't."
Wallace's guest, Nick Burns — a former U.S. ambassador to NATO — asked her, "Did you say what I think you said?"
"I don't know," Wallace replied with a giggle before adding that Burns "would never say" such a profanity and that he was there "to save us, to elevate us."
Here's the clip. (Content warning: Language):
Nicolle Wallace calls Laura Ingraham and her guests "chickens*t"youtu.be
A cursory glance at Twitter reactions to Wallace's "chickens**t" utterance shows more than a few on the left loved that she dropped that bomb on-air:
Others added the following:
Yoo on Tuesday clarified what he said on Ingraham's program, telling the Washington Examiner:
"I want to clear up a misconception of my remarks on the Laura Ingraham show last night. I did not accuse Lt. Col. Vindman of committing the crime of espionage. I have tremendous respect for a decorated officer of the U.S. Army and a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What I was addressing was a report that Ukrainian officials had sought to contact Vindman for advice on how to handle Rudy Giuliani acting as a presidential envoy."
"I meant to say that this sounded like an espionage operation by the Ukrainians," he added. "I think it deliberately misconstrues my words to say that the separate issue of the phone call between the U.S. and Ukrainian president through the chain of command constitutes espionage by Vindman, or that Vindman is some kind of double agent."
(H/T: Red State)