Longtime GOP insider and Mitch McConnell strategist Scott Jennings tried to make excuses for the racism at former President Donald Trump's weekend rally in Madison Square Garden — which was so bad it triggered outrage even among some of Trump's own allies.
But the controversial conservatives effort to distance Trump from the vitriol wasn't convincing CNN host Sara Sidner.
Among the most outrageous speeches was from far-right comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who called the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage."
Democratic Latino strategist Chuck Rocha started out Monday's CNN discussion by warning that the damage from this moment to the Trump campaign could be significant.
"Puerto Ricans are a very proud people," said Rocha. "There are 600,000 of them in Pennsylvania. Will this mean that all of them run to Kamala Harris? No, but I'll tell you what: last night there was a group of Latinos that got together, said enough is enough. And this morning as Puerto Ricans are waking up in Pennsylvania, this video was on their cell phone ... I think this could really hurt him."
Sidner then played a clip of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), one of the most prominent lawmakers of Puerto Rican descent, saying Trump can't distance himself from this because "that language was vetted by the Trump campaign."
Sidner then asked Jennings for comment.
"My comments are, A — she doesn't know what she's talking about," said Jennings, who has reportedly irritated many of his fellow CNN regulars with his increasingly heated defenses of the former president.
"In fact, I actually had some communication with the Trump campaign manager this morning and he used the word 'freelance.' So they had this comedian come up there and he freelanced. They didn't vet this, they didn't approve this, they didn't tell him to go out there and do this. So that's just simply not correct and they didn't—"
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"They didn't vet a speaker?" said Sidner incredulously. "Wait! They didn't vet any of the people?"
"Well, I was told they didn't," stammered Jennings. "He went, he went up there and freelanced these remarks, meaning, no, they didn't go up there and say, here's your pre-approved remarks. So she's saying that the Trump campaign somehow sent him up there with his script and that's not — that is simply not accurate in my opinion, based on what I've heard today. And the Trump campaign has already denounced what he did, which was — I think, was the correct thing to do."
"Yeah, they did denounce the joke, not the other things that were said," said Sidner.
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