CNN Anchor Dana Bash Flat-Out Says ‘Chaos Is What He Wants’ After Trump Freezes Spending

CNN anchor Dana Bash flat-out told Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) that President Donald Trump “would agree — Chaos is what he wants” amid a freeze on federal grants that has been heavily criticized as unconstitutional.

Trump stunned the political and media world when he ordered a freeze on federal grants and loans, a move that has been widely described as usurping Congress and its power of the purse.

On Tuesday’s edition of CNN’s Inside Politics, Bash and Sen. Coons questioned the constitutionality of the move and Bash asked if there is a “failure of imagination” as to how far Trump will go to “disrupt law”:

DANA BASH: We’re talking about all of this within the confines of what you’re talking about, the Constitution, the way that the Congress has followed that and and presidents certainly. And then the laws have been updated. Even up until the Impoundment Act, which I’ll let you describe.

But the reason I bring that up is because this is the, this is kind of the point.

And my question to you is, is there kind of a failure of imagination or a not really a full understanding of the lengths to which President Trump and the people around him genuinely want to go to test and to disrupt the laws and the way and the practices and the way that this town has worked in for many years, for decades and even hundreds of years.

SEN. CHRIS COONS: That’s right. So on the one hand, supporters of President Trump are out there saying, as you just showed in a clip, this was the point. We elected him to shake things up and to challenge the assumptions of Washington.

But that’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is that dollars that come from Washington to our communities, to our schools, to our senior centers, to our police departments and fire companies are being frozen so that money stays here in Washington so that Trump can spend it in expanded tax cuts later this year.

That’s exactly what they’re discussing at the Doral Golf Resort in Florida right now is how they can cut taxes further for wealthy individuals and profitable companies.

And to do that, they want to stop spending on priorities that are already in the law, that help children, help seniors, help keep us safe and help make us strong, whether it’s SBA loans for small business startups or it’s our emergency disaster response.

It’s not just wrong on policy. It’s wrong on the law. And I expect there to be immediate challenges in federal court.

And I frankly think this is what we predicted, when those of us who campaigned saying President Trump would cause chaos would do so, and here we are.

DANA BASH: Yeah. And look, I think that he he would agree with you. Chaos is what he wants, which is why he’s doing this.

The question is, what comes after that?

Watch above via CNN’s Inside Politics.