CNN anchor Jake Tapper left his fellow panelists in stitches on Thursday when he cut away from Donald Trump’s rambling response to the Supreme Court oral arguments on the Colorado ballot case.
“OK, I think we have gotten all the legal analysis we’re going to get out of President Trump,” Tapper sardonically noted while dumping out of the ex-president’s speech, prompting conservative anti-Trump lawyer George Conway to laugh uncontrollably.
While the Supreme Court seems poised to back Trump’s challenge to Colorado’s decision to remove him from its ballot under the Constitution’s ban on insurrectionist office-holders, the GOP frontrunner seemed more interested in holding an impromptu campaign rally and making bizarre claims than discussing the merits of his case.
ADVERTISEMENT
CNN, meanwhile, aired Trump’s press conference live for a few minutes before deciding to pull away when it was clear he was going on an unrelated and incoherent tangent, as they’ve done with several of the ex-president’s speeches in recent weeks.
“You wouldn’t have any of the problems that we have today,” Trump bellowed in front of Mar-a-Lago while speaking to reporters. “Iran was broke when I left, and they had no money to give to Hamas.”
At that point, the network stopped taking Trump live and returned the broadcast to the studio, leading Tapper to joke about the ex-president’s “legal analysis” of the Colorado case.
While Conway chortled, anchor Kasie Hunt reacted to Tapper saying “it’s odd” that Trump wasn’t taking the opportunity to boast about the high court seeming to agree with his lawyers’ argument.
“Is it? Is it odd, Jake?” a laughing Hunt responded.
“No, it’s not because—he wants to talk about himself,” a still giggling Conway added. “He doesn't want to talk about the Supreme Court. And say, ‘Oh, the Supreme Court did a nice job today.’ He just wants to talk about what’s on his mind there.”
CNN correspondent Jamie Gangel, meanwhile, suggested that Trump wasn’t even aware that it seems likely the Supreme Court will tell Colorado to put him back on the ballot.
“Can I just say someone didn’t tell him that this sounded like good news for him today,” she said. “I mean, it wasn’t just the rambling sort of campaign speech, but if he had simply listened to the analysis afterwards, he would know that it sounds like he’s in good shape.”
The network did return to the former president’s press conference moments later when he began answering questions about the actual case, only to pull away once again when he veered towards other subjects.
