DJ Daniel’s father called out MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in a statement on Thursday, after calling President Trump’s honoring of his son “disgusting.”
The father of 13-year-old Devarjaye “DJ” Daniel, who has been battling brain cancer and was honored at President Donald Trump‘s address to Congress on Tuesday, called out MSNBC host Rachel Maddow for the comments she made about Trump’s remarks about his son.
“She needs to shut her mouth if she has nothing nice to say,” Theodis Daniel, DJ’s father, told the New York Post. “This lady didn’t even serve time in the military.”
After the president made DJ an honorary member of the Secret Service during his address, Maddow and fellow MSNBC colleague Nicolle Wallace said the president’s honoring of DJ was a “disgusting” political move.
“She does not need to put her bad energy on us,” Daniel said.
Daniel received a standing ovation from a majority of the crowd, although some Democrats were seen on camera sitting at various times while Trump was speaking about the 13-year-old.
“For the record, and this is disgusting, the president made a spectacle out of praising a young man who thus far survived pediatric cancer, as if the president had something to do with that,” Maddow said during MSNBC’s coverage of the Trump speech.
Wallace said she let herself feel “joy” for DJ during the speech, and said she hoped he lives a great life, before then referencing the Jan. 6 riots.
“I hope he has a long life as a law enforcement officer,” she said. “But I hope he never has to defend the United States Capitol against Donald Trump’s supporters, and if he does, I hope he isn’t one of the six who loses his life to suicide, and I hope he isn’t one who has to testify against the people who carried out acts of seditious conspiracy and then lived to see Donald Trump pardon those people.”
CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF MEDIA AND CULTURE
Maddow, who will return to a once-a-week schedule in April with her show airing only on Mondays despite making $25 million per year, recently scolded her employer over news that production staffers would be victims of a company-wide headcount reduction. After her on-air criticism of MSNBC management, many Maddow critics noted that she could have offered to save a few jobs by offering to take a pay cut.
“Her annual salary is roughly equivalent to the combined salary of about—go figure—125 production staffers,” Puck’s Dylan Byers wrote.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called out Wallace by name on Wednesday during her press briefing.
“Last night, MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace disgustingly looped in a 13-year-old boy with brain cancer into an attack on the president over January 6,” she said.
“It’s sad and frankly pathetic that Democrats and liberals in the legacy media continue to allow their hatred for the president to override their love for our country,” Leavitt later added.
MSNBC did not immediately return a request for comment.
