CNN host Jake Tapper showed two clips with evidence of Donald Trump making serious threats against his critics – and yet House Speaker Mike Johnson refused to face up to reality.
In a heated discussion on State of the Union, the pair clashed over Trump’s menacing “enemies from within” rhetoric used during the presidential race.
“In multiple interviews this week, Donald Trump repeatedly referred to prominent Democrats and others on the left in the United States, American citizens as ‘the enemy from within.’ And he suggested, as president, he would want to use the National Guard or military against them,” Tapper began before playing a clip of Trump making chilling threats against “radical left lunatics.”
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But after watching the video, Mike Johnson defended the comments.
“Jake, you know, that’s not what he’s talking about there, when he’s talking about his marauding gangs of dangerous, violent people who are destroying public properties,” he said after a short awkward silence.
The response sparked an argument with Tapper, marked by numerous interruptions and muffled speech as they spoke over each other.
“Governor Youngkin [of Virginia] tried this with me too,” Tapper snapped back. “[Trump] was very clear. He was asked about this later on because Fox always likes to be a Donald Trump an opportunity to clean it up. And he always says, ‘no, no, I said what I meant.’ Here’s what he said when asked about it the next day.”
The second clip from a recent Fox News interview showed Trump directly naming Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff as the “enemy of within.”
“That’s what he’s talking about, using the US military against not marauding gangs of Venezuela,” Tapper clarified.
The Republican congressman, however, did not budge on his position. As he muttered “wait a minute,” Tapper went on to suggest that he would find it “disgusting” if he heard another politician threatening Mike Johnson with military action.
“Well, thank you and some have said that about us because they don’t like my politics,” Johnson replied. “I did not hear President Trump in that clip say he’s going to seek the military on [Congressman] Adam Schiff. That’s not what he’s saying. You’ve got two different clips in two different contexts. What President Trump is talking about is that they had been attacking and maligning him from the day he came down that golden escalator. Everybody knows that’s true.”
“In 2015, 2016 – that’s when this began. He’s been the most attacked, maligned political figure in US history. They tried to kill him twice in the last few months. This is real, and he feels that acutely. And Jake, you were too you were under attack like he is all the time. They, I mean, Iran, who has assassination attempts against him…”
Tapper interjected “This is conflation!”
The CNN host also had to point out that Schiff and Pelosi were not behind assassination attempts on the former president. Although Johnson agreed with that, he said the political attacks on Trump had been “relentless” and “baseless” before later speaking about how Ukraine was invaded by Russia and Israel was attacked by Iran’s proxies during Joe Biden’s term in office.
“You’re answering a question from a completely different interview,” Tapper said.
