The Nation’s Elie Mystal doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and his response to Scott Jennings trying to gaslight the rest of us on Democrats being the ones that need to tone down the rhetoric was perfect.
In what was otherwise almost an unwatchable segment on CNN’s NewsNight with Abby Phillip this Tuesday on the latest assassination attempt at Trump’s West Palm Beach club in Florida, Jennings, just like JD Vance, attempted to blame Democrats, not easy access to assault rifles for what’s happened to Trump, and Mystal was having none of it.
Here’s the exchange from the clip above where Mystal takes Jennings and the GOP apart for their refusal to actually address the issue of gun control:
JENNINGS: I guess I’m going to be the only one out here that’s not going to blame Donald Trump for his two near assassinations. I mean, honestly, he’s the one being shot at. He’s a target. He’s not saying he can’t even walk outside of his own house.
PHILLIP: We started the conversation by saying that this is not about assigning political blame. Trump is the one today assigning political blame. He is assigning political blame.
JENNINGS: Do you think he’s earned any right to assign or ascribe blame to the two attempts on his life?
MYSTAL: Wait, so if you get shot at, you can say that somebody should shoot my opponents, that’s the rule if somebody shoots at you? You can be like, oh, somebody should shoot at them. Because if you look at Trump’s tweet today, what he said today was that Harris was an enemy from within and that she will destroy the country if she gets elected.
Now, personally, I do not feel comfortable having yet another conversation about the horrible gun violence in this country without talking about the guns. Because I agree with Tim, I want this political violence to stop. And to me, I would propose a solution to this. I call it the protect Trump at all costs assault weapons ban. If we want to protect our political leaders, if we want to protect people who don’t have an elite fighting force protecting them 24/7, one of the best things we can do, not just for Trump, but for all potential victims of gun violence, is to ban assault weapons, to ban the AR-14, and to ban the weapons of terror that these crazy people use to menace not just our leaders, but everybody else in the country.
JENNINGS: Guns don’t have radical ideology, but human beings do.
MYSTAL: Okay, so works — ideologies kill people, not guns.
JENNINGS: And this guy setting up shop in the bushes outside of a golf course, it wasn’t the gun that made him do it.
ROSEN: Yes, but the mental instability.
JENNINGS: Something got to this guy.
ROSEN: Both of these people were mentally unstable. And nobody prevented them from buying a gun.
JENNINGS: He believed Donald Trump needed to be eliminated. And he almost did it. Thank God for the Secret Service.
Mystal wasn’t allowed to respond directly to Jennings immediately, but he was later, and once again took down Jennings’ bothsiderist nonsense on Democrats needing to be the ones to tone things down and when any of us should listen to his advice.
PHILLIP: After the first assassination attempt, you know, Trump and his adviser said that he was a changed man, he was going to bring the country together. He didn’t try to tear the country apart for about four days but there’s clear — it’s clear, he abandoned that mission. I mean, wouldn’t it be the thing to do right now to take that back up and say, starting with me?
JENNINGS: Yes, I think any politician could go on T.V. tonight and say, I am going to take personal responsibility for my own language and my own actions. But this point about de-radicalization, what I mean is, look, when you’ve had this kind of language about somebody be the underpinning of a campaign for years and intensely for the last several months, the only way to unwind it is for the people who’ve been saying it, chiefly the president and the vice president, to go on T.V. and say, you know what, we went too far. And what we said, honestly, is not true. The country will not —
MYSTAL: I think the Democrats will tamp down their language about Trump the moment Trump tamps down his language about the Democrats, about immigrants, about people of color, about women, and not a moment before.
JENNINGS: What about how many times are we going to shoot at him?
MYSTAL: Is your argument, literally, that you are not under threat unless somebody directly takes a shot at you? Is that actually what you’re saying? Do you have access to Secret Service files about how many threats Harris and Biden have received over the past year, how many threats Barack Obama, the first black president, received for eight years while he was in the White House? Do you have those Secret Service files, or are you just out here talking because somebody was caught in the bushes on Saturday?
If you want something done, if you want to get away from this violence and hatred, the clearest thing to do is to take away the weapons that these people are using to cause the violence and hatred. Rhetoric does not kill people. Guns do.
JENNINGS: So you’re okay with people being radicalized, you just want to Disarm them, but it’s okay to continue to lie to them about what will happen to the country if your political opponents win?
NAFTALI: He didn’t say that.
PHILLIP: Tim, last word, and then we got to go.
Which was sadly followed by more bothsiderism from another guest on the panel rather than Mystal being allowed to counter Jennings’ lies.
This is going to be the drumbeat from these assholes from now to the election, telling Democrats to shut up and quit telling the truth about how dangerous Trump is, and we can’t allow it to go unchallenged. We’re not going to shut up and Democrats aren’t going to quit campaigning against Trump, and Scott Jennings can stuff it.
