CNN contributor Scott Jennings at the Democratic National Convention in August of 2024 (Image: Screengrab via CNN / YouTube)
CNN chief political analyst David Axelrod confronted Republican pundit Scott Jennings after Jennings attempted to downplay the seriousness of President Donald Trump’s attempted coup on January 6, 2021.
“I don't treat [that day] like a national holiday like the Democrats do. It was a bad day, but I don't look forward to memorializing it every year. It's a bad day. It should never happen again,” Jennings said on “the Source” with Kaitlan Collins. “The president has a point of view on it. He's got a messaging point of view on it that he's never backed away from. And the American people, frankly, adjudicated these questions in the 2024 election. And he's a sitting president.”
Axelrod, however, has a long memory, and he recalled back when Jennings had a more serious take on Trump’s attempts to de-certify the 2020 election with the help of vice president Mike Pence and a mob of MAGA Republicans storming the Capitol.
“You and I have been friends for a long time. I've never been prouder of you than in the aftermath of that, because you were unremittingly critical of what happened,” Axelrod reminded Jennings. “You were critical of the assault on police officers. One hundred and seventy people were convicted of assaulting police officers — 65 of them with weapons — and you were eloquent in that moment.”
“Whatever you feel you have to say or do now, that [moment] will remain something that you and your kids will look back at with pride,” Axelrod added. “I hope that if a Democratic president were to do what [Trump] did that day … that I can be as eloquent as you were in criticizing a president of your own party.”
In an after-the-fact interview on January 12, 2021, Jennings previously said that Trump “is fully responsible” for the January 6 violence, as well as for a “days-long conspiracy … to try to subvert the Constitution.”
“He constructed the lie that — on which the whole crowd was based, that he actually won the election. He called them to Washington. He and other speakers that he had invited to the rally whipped them into a frenzy. He told them to go down to the Capitol. He told them that, ‘We have to go convince Mike Pence to change his mind, and we have to do it in any way we can.’ I mean, he’s responsible from soup to nuts for that crowd, and I think for the actions of that crowd,” Jennings told PBS “Frontline” about Trump’s attack on the capitol.
Watch the segment below:
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