CHUCK TODD (HOST): Let me put up something Amy Walter wrote, my friend over at the Cook Political Report. “This battle isn't unique to the Trump era. It’s simply the latest in a never ending war by both sides to justify their partisan behavior. Meanwhile voters aren't making the distinctions on policy or procedure or hypocrisy either. Instead, they rally behind their team. There’s no time for nuance; there is only time for war. So war it will be for the foreseeable future." And I want to add something here, Kasie. It seems as if Republicans in the Senate and essentially the body politic left and right, has actually embraced the Trump style of politics.

KASIE HUNT: I think that's absolutely true. And I think you saw that when you saw Lisa Murkowski go to the floor after she voted no and there was nobody hardly in the chamber watching her and nobody to applaud her. She was the one who actually took the stand and said we need to be viewing this differently. There aren't many Republicans who are doing that anymore. And even those who are giving lip service to civility, Ben Sasse, Jeff Flake, first of all, what will they actually do? Will they run against the president? But second of all, will there be any voters -- is there a constituency behind that? I'm just not convinced. People have embraced this president from top to bottom. And you know, Chuck, I think that the deeply personal nature of the opposition to this, I just, I truly wonder if the Republican Party realizes how that this is going to play out over the longer term, with the way that women have felt about this. Because there were people that I talked to day in and day out who really felt as though this was the highest levels of our institutions doing exactly what they have been fighting against, which is they came forward and told their stories and the institutions said to them, “You don't matter.”

AL CARDENAS (RIGHT-WING LOBBYIST): Listen, dysfunction had begun before Donald Trump got to the White House and the Congress, but it's reached new levels. The appeal to peoples' lower instincts by both bases have caused things like violence in the streets, demonstrations on both sides that go beyond the pale.

Todd returned to the topic later in the show, claiming President Trump has “transformed” politics and called him “the big winner here”:

CHUCK TODD (HOST): The president has transformed not just his party, but this entire town. Everybody now conducts politics in his image; fight, fight, fight. Deny, deny, deny. Just take it to your opponent whatever it takes.  

DANIELLA PLETKA: Yes, I don’t think this is a word but the vulgarization of something that was pretty vulgar to start with, American politics. It’s really unbelievable because Donald Trump has not been isolated by his style or his manner or his antipathy toward so much of the political landscape. Rather, he has just taken them along with him. The irony here is, just to come back to the midterms for a second, the irony is I think that people even almost two years into Donald Trump’s presidency, don’t understand what helps Donald Trump. This Kavanaugh stuff, this reaction to it --  

TODD: Helps him. 

PLETKA: -- helps him. 

TODD: He was the big winner here.     

Previously:

On Roland Martin Unfiltered, Angelo Carusone discusses how right-wing pundits engage in “a working the refs strategy” on cable TV

MSNBC MTP Daily guest suggests Kavanaugh accusers should have been ignored

MSNBC contributor John Podhoretz complains about anti-Kavanaugh campaign, ignores right-wing dark money