On Monday evening’s CNN Tonight, host Laura Coates assembled a panel to discuss the fallout from the second hearing into the January 6 riot at the Capitol and the conversation quickly drifted toward the future of the Republican Party and whether Republican voters should vote for Donald Trump if he is the GOP nominee in 2024.
Coates was the first to wail about Republicans still claiming they would vote for Trump if he was the nominee: “Remember Bill Barr has said, that he would still vote for Donald Trump,” she whined. “You have Bill Stepien, who I believe is working on a campaign of somebody who is against Congresswoman Liz Cheney who is promoting foundationally very much what Trump, who has endorsed this candidate.”
New York Times columnist Michelle Cottle jumped in and freaked out that “they're not willing to let this go to the degree that it's gonna hurt what they see as the party's way to cling to power in this degree.”
Cottle continued her kvetching: “they are willing to keep putting up with, if not actively advancing, this complete bs story that this election was stolen.”
For a dose of reality, PR pro Scott Jennings set the record straight:
But to ask a Republican like Bill Barr, who has been a stalwart Republican his entire life, to put it to him and say, your choices are to abandon your entire political value system -- I don't personally think it's a fair question. He's already said he's gonna support somebody else in the 2024 primary. He's made it perfectly clear he doesn't think Donald Trump should be the nominee again. Which you have to understand, Republicans deeply believe that -- and what Bill Barr has directly said is what a lot of us believe -- that the progressive policy mindset is terrible for this country. And they're not interested in electing it just because they don't like Donald Trump.
Parroting her party’s claim that democracy is under attack, Cottle shrieked “you have to decide whether salvaging democracy is more important than your political values.”
Correspondent Kasie Hunt proving once and for all that she isn’t a journalist whined that the purpose of the Democrat Party’s January 6 show trials is to prove Trump “criminally undermined our peaceful transfer of power.”
Jennings jumped in again to note how when it comes to picking a Republican presidential nominee “we're going to cross that bridge when we come to it”
That answer wasn’t good enough for Cottle who demanded: “the way to drive that home is to make clear that no, you will not support the man who has been willing to burn down the system.” According to her, supporting the GOP nominee no matter who it is is “complete cowardice”.
CNN doesn’t get to dictate who the GOP nominee is and whether or not Republican voters support him or her.
This delusional segment was made possible by Discover. Their information is linked.
To read the relevant transcript click “expand”:
CNN Tonight
6/13/2022
9:19:55 p.m. EasternLAURA COATES: You're talking about the past. Remember Bill Barr has said, that he would still vote for Donald Trump. You have Bill Stepien, who I believe is working on a campaign of somebody who is against Congresswoman Liz Cheney who is promoting foundationally very much what Trump, who has endorsed this candidate. So it's not too long in the past this has actually happened about who they once were. You say team chicken.
MICHELLE COTTLE: This is not about what happened then. It's about where they're going with it forward. They're not willing to let this go to the degree that it's gonna hurt what they see as the party's way to cling to power in this degree. They are willing to keep putting up with, if not actively advancing, this complete bs story that this election was stolen.
SCOTT JENNINGS: But to ask a Republican like Bill Barr, who has been a stalwart Republican his entire life, to put it to him and say, your choices are to abandon your entire political value system -- I don't personally think it's a fair question. He's already said he's gonna support somebody else in the 2024 primary. He's made it perfectly clear he doesn't think Donald Trump should be the nominee again. Which you have to understand, Republicans deeply believe that -- and what Bill Barr has directly said is what a lot of us believe -- that the progressive policy mindset is terrible for this country. And they're not interested in electing it just because they don't like Donald Trump.
COTTLE: At some point, you have to decide whether salvaging democracy is more important than your political values.
[crosstalk]
KASIE HUNT: But the whole point of these hearings is to show -- it's not saying the Republican way of governing the country is the wrong way. I mean Liz Cheney is sitting up on the dais, she’s one of the most conservative Republicans in the party. They're saying this man, this man criminally undermined our peaceful transfer of power. I think that's where people get stuck.
JENNINGS: But the question is always, well, then you must be ready to vote Democrat in 2024. Well, no --
[Crosstalk]
HUNT: That's the way the system is set up.
JENNINGS: We're going to cross that bridge when we come to it. What I hear all these people saying and correctly, let's get a different nominee. Let's do something different here. That's the first bridge we have to cross. It's the correct bridge.
COTTLE: And the way to drive that home is to make clear that no, you will not support the man who has been willing to burn down the system. If it's the, oh, well, I'd rather have somebody else but if he makes it to be the nominee, yeah, I'll back him because these guys are so bad. That's no way to make it clear what you're standing up for. That's complete cowardice.
