Scott Jennings, one in all CNN’s go-to conservative commentators, gave an equivocating response on-air Monday night time when requested to react to a number of racist and offensive remarks audio system spewed at a Donald Trump rally in New York Metropolis on Sunday.
Throughout a section on his “360” information panel present, host Anderson Cooper launched footage of inflammatory moments from the Madison Sq. Backyard rally, together with a clip of comic Tony Hinchcliffe referring to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”
Cooper requested Jennings to share his ideas concerning the occasion: “You worked in the Bush/Cheney White House, your close ally [is] Sen. Mitch McConnell — none of them would come within 100 miles of this stuff. Does it make you sad that this is what a Republican rally sounds like a week before the election?”
“Yeah, I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit,” Jennings responded. “I’m not going to sit here and pretend like it’s good or helpful.” He criticized the rally’s hate-filled rhetoric as “stupid,” “a distraction” and “offensive.”
However he then turned the difficulty on Vice President Kamala Harris, claiming the Democratic nominee additionally has supporters from the “entertainment industry” who’ve mentioned “vile and offensive things in the context of politics.”
“Not all them were at her rallies, but if you look at some of the lyrics and other production that they’ve done, it is terrible, violent and offensive,” he mentioned. “So if we’re all going to professionally faint tonight, I would just say let’s maybe do it on both sides of the line,” he continued, earlier than Cooper interjected.
“Was that introducing her at a rally?” the CNN host requested.
“I said, it’s not all been done, it’s not all been done at any of her events,” Jennings mentioned.
“Right, but has it been done at any of her events?” Cooper pressed.
“Some of her people, that are her most ardent supporters, have said things about women and domestic violence, and the treatment of women and other issues, that are truly beyond the pale,” Jennings charged. “I do think when you’re in the entertainment industry, you get edgy, and this is what you get when you put them at a political rally.”
Jennings didn’t identify the Harris supporters he was referring to, nor did he specify what “violent and offensive” lyrics or remarks he’d meant.
ANGELA WEISS through Getty Pictures
The CNN pundit was criticized on X, previously Twitter, for deflecting from the subject of Trump’s rally.
“Make that fraud Scott Jennings give ONE EXAMPLE of anyone at Harris’ rallies demeaning entire races, cultures, and countries,” one X person wrote. “He cannot because he is a liar just like Trump. FIRE HIM NOW!”
Hinchcliffe has come below hearth for his wildly racist efficiency on the Sunday rally.
Throughout his set, he leaned on stereotypes about Latinos, saying they “love making babies,” and made a number of xenophobic statements.
He made an anti-Black joke about Black individuals carving “watermelons” as a substitute of pumpkins for Halloween, and he referenced Trump’s false, racist claims about Haitian immigrants consuming individuals’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.
Hinchcliffe additionally referenced Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza and made a derogatory remark about Palestinians throwing rocks. He additionally made an antisemitic joke about Jewish individuals being obsessive about cash.
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The precise-wing comic was not the one speaker who made such blatantly racist statements on Sunday. Former New York Metropolis Mayor Rudy Giuliani mentioned, “Palestinians are taught to kill us at 2 years old,” and senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller mentioned at one level, “America is for Americans and for Americans only.”
Trump has downplayed the severity of these feedback. Talking from Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, Trump praised his New York Metropolis rally calling it a “lovefest.”
“That was love in the room, and it was love for our country,” he mentioned.
