On Friday morning’s New Day, CNN host Jim Sciutto interviewed Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s former Chief of Staff. Sciutto queried Mulvaney about the allegations made against Trump by John Bolton, in his new book, The Room Where it Happened. Sciutto suggested that those who witnessed the alleged events in Bolton’s book testify “under oath” about the claims and attacked Mulvaney for a statement that he made about COVID-19.
Sciutto referenced Bolton’s claim that Trump told China’s president that he agreed with the concentration camps that China is creating for Uighur Muslims, and asked Mulvaney if there are transcripts for the conversations: “If you're saying it's false, will the White House release transcripts of those conversations to contradict this version of events?”
Mulvaney, who denied Bolton’s assertions throughout the interview, stated that there are no transcripts:
In fairness, I don't think transcripts exist to those conversations. This is not like it's a telephone conversation with Mr. Zelensky. These are face-to-face meetings, there are notes that are taken by folks who are there, but there's no such thing, I don’t think, as a transcript of our face-to-face meeting with Mr. XI.
However, Sciutto was not content with this answer. He further pressed the issue by inquiring if those who were at the meeting between Xi and Trump would testify against Bolton’s accusations: “Will they testify under oath? Will they then testify under oath to contradict these accounts?”
Mulvaney was taken aback by the question, as Sciutto seemed to be saying that Xi should testify under oath. Sciutto at first did not clarify his question:
MULVANEY: I’m sorry, will President XI testify under oath?
SCIUTTO: Anybody.
MULVANEY: I think that it’s unlikely that the President of China would testify under oath.
Sciutto then said that he was alluding to only the Americans who were at the meeting. To ask these questions, he aggressively interrupted Mulvaney. Sciutto did this throughout the interview, and Mulvaney was often not able to finish his answers. By suggesting that the witnesses testify under oath, Sciutto was demonstrating that he believes Bolton’s attestations. The anchor never actually explained the context in which anyone would testify under oath about Bolton's book, would this be a congressional hearing?
On Thursday’s show, Sciutto also displayed that he believed Bolton, despite the former national security advisor having refused to testify under oath at the Senate impeachment hearings. This is not surprising, as CNN has kept alive the debunked Russia collusion and Trump abuse of power allegations.
Sciutto next attacked Mulvaney personally:
I do want to ask you about the COVID crisis, because it is still, of course, a national crisis. The death toll is rising. At the CPAC conference in February, you said the following regarding the COVID outbreak. And we're going to play the comments here. The reason you're seeing so much attention to it today is that they think this is going to be what brings down the president. That's what this is all about. Since then, nearly 120,000 Americans have died. Were you wrong?
As Mulvaney stated in his response, this was an unfair question because “We have a lot more information now than we did back then.” Furthermore, CNN has glossed over similar statements in February from Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi.
The full transcript for the June 19th interview is here:
CNN New Day
06/19/2020
7:39:41 AM
JIM SCIUTTO: Let me ask you, if you're saying that Bolton's accounts, for instance, of requesting that a foreign power, an authoritarian power, intervene in the election to help his election, the president giving him a pass to house, to imprison a million Muslims in concentration camps, if you're saying it's false, will the White House release transcripts of those conversations to contradict this version of events?
MICK MULVANEY (TRUMP’S FORMER ACTING CHIEF OF STAFF): In fairness, I don't think transcripts exist to those conversations. This is not like it's a telephone conversation with Mr. Zelensky. These are face-to-face meetings, there are notes that are taken by folks who are there, but there's no such thing, I don’t think, as a transcript of our face-to-face meeting with Mr. XI.
SCIUTTO: Will they testify under oath? Will they then testify under oath to contradict these accounts?
MULVANEY: I’m sorry, will President XI testify under oath?
SCIUTTO: Anybody.
MULVANEY: I think that it’s unlikely that the President of China would testify under oath.
SCIUTTO: Anybody -- no, I’m not asking about President XI, I’m asking about witnesses present who are Americans. I'm not asking about the Chinese President. I do want to ask you about the COVID crisis, because it is still, of course, a national crisis. The death toll is rising. At the CPAC conference in February, you said the following regarding the COVID outbreak. And we're going to play the comments here.
[Cuts to video]
The reason you're seeing so much attention to it today is that they think this is going to be what brings down the president. That's what this is all about.
[Cuts back to live]
SCIUTTO: Since then, nearly 120,000 Americans have died. Were you wrong?
MULVANEY: We have a lot more information now than we did back then, Jim. Keep in mind, back then, we were comparing COVID, coronavirus, to the other two coronaviruses that we had experience with, which is SARS and MERS. And in February of 2020, I guess it was 2020 now, we were under the belief, led in large part by the CDC, that if we could keep the disease out of the United States, that we could deal with it the same way as we dealt with MERS and SARS. And while MERS and SERS were terrible diseases, we managed to keep them generally out of the United States and they did not disrupt our way of life here. And that is the only piece of -- that's the perspective we had on coronavirus back in February. Does it turn out the disease is different than we expected it to be? Absolutely does. A lot of folks have been wrong about this from the very beginning. CDC just put out some information two weeks ago that says it's actually kind of hard to get this disease from hard services. That's different then what they said in February. Were they wrong? It looks like they were. They also put out information –
SCIUTTO: Is the president wrong --
