President Donald Trump‘s impromptu news conference in the Rose Garden may have — according to one MSNBC host — been the product of the commander-in-chief losing it after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused him of perpetrating a “cover-up.”

Wednesday on Deadline: White House, Nicolle Wallace suggested that the president may have been sent over the edge by Pelosi’s remarks. Hence Trump’s “I don’t do cover-ups” comment in the Rose Garden — words which brought to mind an iconic denial from a scandal-plagued president of yesteryear.

“Donald Trump’s ‘I don’t do cover-ups’ [is] an undeniable echo of Richard Nixon’s ‘I’m not a crook’ defense,” Wallace said. “With the stakes potentially just as high for his presidency.”

Those words, in Wallace’s view, came from a man who felt betrayed by the House Speaker, and possibly snapped, as a result.

“In his mind, he’s got some bond with [Pelosi], whether real or imagined,” Wallace said. “Where she has good manners, he thinks she treats him with respect. She does treat him with respect. And it really seemed to unravel him psychologically for her to accuse him of a cover-up first thing this morning.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.

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