CNN anchor Kate Bolduan told conservative network contributor Scott Jennings to “zip it” Monday during a discussion about the reasons American voters came out in droves to support Donald Trump’s reelection.
After Jennings and another guest, Bakari Sellers, started talking about inflation, Bolduan told them both, “Stop, let’s move on.”
The two kept talking, prompting the News Central anchor to tell Jennings, “Zip it.”
All three laughed it off, with Bolduan asking her colleague off-camera for help moderating the discussion, which she revealed later was on her first day back after a holiday break.
On the causes of Congress certifying Trump’s election win four years to the day after he refused to concede and his supporters violently stormed the Capitol, Bolduan asked Sellers if Monday’s events showed that democracy works or if Americans have short memories.
Sellers favored the latter.
“I think that Democrats should go out and Joe Biden should rally on the Mall. I think that then we should sit on Mike Johnson’s desk. We should take the Confederate flag and parade through the Capitol. I think we should injure 140 officers, and then if Kamala Harris dares to certify the vote, we should threaten to hang her,“ he said sarcastically.
“I think people should understand how ludicrous that sounds, but that‘s where we were four years ago. That is what this incoming president helped usher in,” Sellers continued, while also acknowledging the role of “economic pressures, prices rising, [and] cultural anxiety.”
Bolduan went to Jennings, asking, “It is a stunning political comeback attributed to how Trump played it afterward, how Democrats played it afterward, or something else?”
Jennings replied that it was a bit of everything.
“But to me, the big message is that in the United States, the people decide, and because of the disastrous four years that came after Donald Trump, the people decided to return Donald Trump to power. And that’s fundamentally what happened,” Jennings said.
“They looked at what happened on January the 6th, they looked at all the things Democrats claimed about Donald Trump, and they also analyzed every single decision that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris made, and they delivered Donald Trump a convincing win four years later.”
Bolduan pushed back, emphasizing that the Jan. 6 insurrection was ultimately an effort to prevent the people’s will from being seen through.
“It is tough, though, Scott, because when you say that people decide. That’s what people tried to make sure didn’t happen on Jan. 6: was allowing the people to decide it.”
Jennings admitted that Jan. 6 was “terrible,” but that ultimately, “The machinery turned, Joe Biden became president, he had one of the worst terms of any president, and then the people scrambled back to Donald Trump.”
