‘I Ran the Entire Quote!’ Jake Tapper Spars with GOP Senator Who Claims CNN Pushed ‘Hoax’ About Trump Remark
CNN’s Jake Tapper sparred with Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) after the latter called the network’s coverage of former President Donald Trump’s comments about Liz Cheney and facing rifle barrels a “hoax” on Friday.
The comments elicited a rare clarification from Trump and saw him dragged for wishing death on the former Republican congresswoman. A Drudge headline that ran throughout Friday read, “TRUMP CALLS FOR CHENEY”S EXECUTION.”
Trump was speaking Thursday night to Tucker Carlson about Cheney when he said she wanted to send Americans to die on foreign battlefields in wars she would not enlist to fight in. Trump addressed her as a “radical war hawk” and added:
Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, ok? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face. You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, “Oh, gee, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.”
CNN’s Kasie Hunt took flak from the far right throughout Friday after she told her viewers Trump had said Cheney should be “fired upon.” Hunt was accused of taking Trump out of context in her reporting of his controversial remarks.
On Friday’s The Lead, Tapper welcomed Hagerty on to discuss Trump’s comments. Tapper aired them in full and argued they rightly offended some people.
Hagerty disagreed and called CNN’s reporting of the story a “hoax”:
HAGERTY: War is serious. War is deadly. He was making that point with this analogy. I think that’s what’s here. That’s the point here. What we’re talking about, though, is the fact that President Trump is actually winning. Voters would much prefer to hear about what Kamala Harris’s position is on the economy, what she’s going to do to fix our broken southern border, to take crime in our streets down, to make our nation more safe and secure. Rather than talk about that, we’re going to blow up yet another one of these stories into some sort of pre-election day hoax. I think we should move on.
TAPPER: Well, I don’t know how you define hoax. This is nothing to hoax. We ran this clip and you know, there are people who are legitimately offended by that.
HAGERTY: It’s a distortion, Jake. This is a distortion.
TAPPER: I ran the entire quote, Senator! We ran the entire thing.
HAGERTY: This is a distortion about violence, and the violence he’s talking about is the violence that’s perpetrated on our men and women in service and the decisions that are made by people like Liz Cheney to send them into the throes.
TAPPER: Liz Cheney was an assistant secretary of state. When did she send anyone into battle?
HAGERTY: I think President Trump is making a broad statement and using her as an example of the war hawks in Washington that make these decisions from the comfort of an office. Perhaps not taking into account the fact that there are very serious consequences. Those consequences are realized by those people that are in the foxhole, those people that are actually in combat situations. That’s what he was illustrating and nothing more.
Tapper pressed then Hagerty on how he could not see the controversial nature of Trump’s remarks and how some might not view them as violent in nature.
Hagerty concluded, “This is a distortion of what President Trump meant, and you know it. President Trump wasn’t calling for any type of violence on Liz Cheney.”
Tapper replied, “I didn’t say he was.”
Watch above via CNN.
