'What a denial!' Conservative buried for defending Trump's insults against Jewish voters
CNN's Scott Jennings was buried by his fellow panelists for defending Donald Trump for saying that “the Jewish people” would be partially to blame if he loses the election.
The former president told a gathering of Republicans at an event promoted as opposing antisemitism that any Jewish person who voted for Kamala Harris "should have their head examined" and falsely claimed the vice president had accepted the support of "Hamas sympathizers, antisemites, Israel haters on college campuses and everywhere else," and Jennings argued that was effective messaging.
"He's competing for the Jewish vote in a way that Republicans don't normally expect to compete," Jennings said. "Jewish Americans normally overwhelmingly vote Democratic and have for a very long time, and he's directly competing to get a better percentage."
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He disputed that the Republican nominee's comments about Jewish voters were insulting.
"He's making an overt appeal that if you don't like the policies toward Israel or the language of the rhetoric toward Israel coming out of the Democratic Party, there's another way."
Host Kasie Hunt pointed out that Trump hadn't used those words, which Jennings conceded was accurate, but former Republican pollster Sarah Longwell questioned his tactics.
"That's how you win friends and influence people, you tell them they've got to have their heads examined – look at these idiots, you'd be so stupid," Longwell said. "That is how you normally entice people to come over to your side. No, it's great – great work."
Civil rights attorney Maya Wiley said the speech was another example of Trump making an issue about him instead of offering policy solutions, and she pointed to the former president's equivocation on white supremacist demonstrators at the deadly Unite the Right rally – which drew pushback from Jennings.
"If you would like to discuss the relative gatherings of antisemitism in this country going on over the last few months and you want to talk about who's getting together, where and what their political proclivities are, let's talk about what's going on on all these college campuses," Jennings said. "Let's talk about what's gone on in the streets in New York City, and he is talking about the policy. He did have strong pro-Israel policies, he did take a hard line against Iran, and right now the U.S. government is constantly Lucy with the football dealing with Hamas. The antisemitism problem in this country is on the left, it is not on the right."
Hunt agreed that some college demonstrations have pushed antisemitic messages about the Israel-Gaza conflict, but she pointed out that Trump had dined with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and endorsed Holocaust denier Mark Robinson for North Carolina governor.
"[Antisemitism] is ugly and that is why we shouldn't nominate a president who dines with white supremacists," Longwell said,.
"If you want to make apologies for it on the left," Jennings interjected, "go ahead."
"I'm not making apologies for it," Longwell replied, "you are denying it exists on the right. You are stumping for Trump in a way that tries to ignore that he himself dined with a white supremacist, he's cozied up to Marjorie 'Jewish space lasers' Greene."
"You're making a tactical argument, and everybody's sitting at this table knows where the source of antisemitism is in this country," Jennings said. "It is not on the right."
"What a denial!" Longwell said.
"That is an extreme statement," Wiley added.
Longwell then cornered Jennings and demanded to know whether Trump had dined with Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago and whether he was indeed a white nationalist, and he grudgingly agreed to both points.
"He did dine with Nick Fuentes," Jennings agreed. "He should not have done that."
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