'Oh come on!' CNN Republican faces groans from panelists after latest suggestion

A Republican strategist drew groans from fellow CNN panelists with his praise for U.S. Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett.

The Donald Trump appointee cast the deciding vote in the president-elect's eleventh-hour effort to block his sentencing Friday in the New York hush money case, but the trial judge has already indicated he would not impose any jail time for his 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records.

"Trump has already beaten the rap in every meaningful sense," said Molly Ball, senior political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. "He feels that the election, to some extent, was a referendum on these charges, and the American people decided they were not disqualifying. They did not care or, at least weighed against other concerns, they were not that important and and he won the election anyway. He tweeted yesterday, or he truthed yesterday, that this was, you know, 'the pathetic dying remnants of the witch hunt,' and and that really is how it feels right now without, you know, necessarily agreeing with his language about a witch hunt. This is the sort of pathetic, dying remnants of all of the legal cases against him. There were so many, and for so long last year, it seemed like he was going to be mired in all of this stuff."

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"The Supreme Court took a lot of it off of his plate with the immunity decision, and this is sort of all that's left and, like, what are what are they going to do, put him under house arrest?" Ball added. "He can't leave the White House? It really is sort of over when it comes to these legal cases."

Kate Bedingfield, a former White House communications director for president Joe Biden, didn't disagree.

"I think this is fairly politically irrelevant at this point, which is, you know, still, I think a sort of shocking thing to accept that the incoming president of the United States, you know, criminal convictions are politically irrelevant," Bedingfield said. "But that's just the fact of the matter. They are and I think in the way that, you know, I think the way Trump is responding and sort of downplaying it and kind of saying, you know, 'let them do their little thing,' rather than, you know, getting riled up and fighting. It also just kind of indicates, you know, it's just not it is not going to have a whole lot of political salience in this moment."

GOP strategist Brad Todd agreed with Trump's framing and said the Supreme Court's refusal to end the criminal proceedings undercut liberal criticism of the justices.

"I think it is a pathetic, dying remnants of a witch hunt – that's a pretty good description," Todd said. "But I also think one takeaway from this is all the left-wingers who got their knickers in a twist over Amy Coney Barrett and saying she would do whatever Trump wanted. They owe her an apology today, and let's see it."

"Oh, come on, Brad," Bedingfield replied, as other panelists laughed. "That will not be forthcoming, just going to tell you right now."

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