Former lawmaker shuts down GOP strategist's election scheme blame-game

Former South Carolina congressman Joe Cunningham showed little patience for podcaster and former National Republican Senatorial Committee senior advisor Matt Whitlock at a CNN panel discussion on Republican’s mid-decade gerrymandering slaughter.

The argument began after Cunnigham blamed President Donald Trump for the frenetic redistricting scrum, which kicked off in Texas after Trump demanded Republicans wrest out new districts by drowning Democratic voters in neighboring majority-Republican territory.

Whitlock took issue with who started the fight: “One thing that the congressman said that I would just challenge is [his claim] that this began with Texas. This began with New York, but it also began with the Census and the reapportionment that had so many obvious errors that landed in the side of Democrats. And so, Republicans have had frustration on that. That's, I think, what President Trump really based a lot of this frustration off of.”

But Cunningham had heard that claim before and appeared ready for it.

“Yeah. No, can I jump in here and just note that there's only one party that's put a bill on the House floor to ban gerrymandering, and that's the Democratic Party,” said Cunningham. “It's a bill that I voted for. And I think I want to reiterate why it is that Republicans in South Carolina are redistricting: It's at the behest of President Trump.”

But Cunningham delivered his information with a history lesson that should possibly scare the GOP.

“The last time that Trump meddled in a midterm election when he was president was back in 2018, when he ousted Mark Sanford in South Carolina’s first congressional district, a district that Trump carried by 13 points,” Cunningham said, incensed. “I came in and flipped that seat in 2018 because of that. So, I think people need to understand the reach and the breadth of which Democrats can attain in this redistricting process, in this environment.”

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