CNN’s John Berman confronted a conservative commentator over President Donald Trump’s attack on a Republican senator — and he quickly backed down.
The president lashed out at Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) for siding with Democrats to include presidents in a ban on stock trading by members of Congress, even though it wouldn’t take effect until after he was out of office, and the “CNN News Central” host asked conservative Scott Jennings to comment on the issue.
“There’s some intra-party conversations going on about how to do this and whether Democrats may be trying to use it to specifically target the president, so I don’t know how it’s going to turn out,” Jennings said. “I do know the politics of it, though, which are, it’s an 80-over-20 issue. People don’t think members of Congress should be able to day trade on insider knowledge.”
“Now, my personal view is I don’t have a problem if people own things and they sit in a blind trust or whatever,” Jennings added. “But, you know, to the average person, the idea that you might know something that then could allow you to make a trade that would then benefit you that the average person wouldn’t know, it doesn’t feel right, and so that’s the impetus behind the deal. I mean, a lot of members of Congress have done quite well in the stock market.”
Berman pounced on the Trump-backing pundit’s seeming admission that the president had landed on the wrong side of a broadly popular issue by opposing Hawley’s ban stock trading by members of Congress — along with the president and vice president.
“You say it’s an 80-20 issue,” Berman said. “What side is President Trump on there? The 20? The 20? The 20?”
Jennings stammered as he apparently realized he’d admitted Trump was on the wrong side of the debate, and then downplayed Trump’s personal attack on Hawley, whom the president called a “second-tier senator.”
“I think he, I think he wants to ban it,” Hawley said. “I think he’s worried about this specific version, so we’ll see what happens.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
– YouTube youtu.be