CNN Table Erupts When Trump Fan Claims ‘We’re Not Calling People Hitler’

The CNN Newsnight table erupted when Trump defender Ben Ferguson blurted out “We’re not calling people Hitler” in a discussion of a leaked chat and Vice President JD Vance’s reaction to it.

Politico dropped a bomb Tuesday by releasing a Telegram chat between Young Republican leaders from New York, Arizona, and Vermont that featured stunningly racist, bigoted, anti-Semitic, and otherwise deplorable chatter.

“Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don’t fit the Hitler aesthetic,” read one characteristic message.

VP Vance reacted with a post downplaying the story and deflecting to Democrat Jay Jones’s text scandal.

On Tuesday’s edition of CNN NewsNight, anchor Abby Phillip hosted a panel comprised of Ana Navarro, Ben Ferguson, Keith Boykin, and Kristin Davison.

When Ferguson made his claim, the non-MAGA contingent erupted with reminders that Vance “literally called Donald Trump Hitler!”:

PHILLIP: Vice President J.D. Vance is taking a different approach tonight. Citing the text of a Democratic candidate for Virginia’s attorney general from a couple of years ago in which he suggested a lawmaker get two bullets to the head, Vance writes, quote, “This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the A.G. of Virginia. I refuse to join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence.”

It’s an interesting choice on Vance’s part.

DAVINSON: Yes, I think the Vice President missed an opportunity here. I mean, these are, you know, young Republicans, disgusting. They’re learning a hard life lesson on the public stage right now that you need to grow up and not, you know, say stupid and hateful and just disgusting things.

I think the Vice President could have really used this moment as a learning moment. And, you know, encouraging these young men and women, I don’t know who they were, but to be better and to, you know, denounce what they’ve said to move on and be better. These are young Republicans.

And so I don’t hold necessarily anyone responsible. They’re young, they need to make mistakes, they need to apologize and see the error and move forward. And I wish, you know, the Vice President would have said that. I don’t understand the excuse for the attorney, the Democrat nominee

for attorney general in Virginia when he texted, you know, even worse things as an adult, as a sitting officeholder about a colleague in the state assembly. And so they’re not comparable, they really aren’t. These comments are disgusting.

I really hope these young men and women learn from this, learn that, you know, how wrong it was and become better. And I really hope I’m glad to see a number of Republicans step up and condemn them as well, because they’re terrible.

But I do think to come to say that this somehow justifies that Jay Jones is did nothing wrong.

BOYKIN: And you just did exactly the same thing that J.D. Vance did, except for the fact that you didn’t you denounce it — denounce the words. But you immediately pivoted.

DAVINSON: I wouldn’t have brought him up.

BOYKIN: But you immediately pivoted to a Democrat instead of focusing on the fact that this is a pattern. The saddest thing about this story is that it was not the least bit surprising to me. I mean, I don’t think I don’t. I don’t think anyone who I know who has been who’s familiar with where the Republican Party has been going the past decade or so.

FERGUSON: We’re not calling people “Hitler” or “fascist.”

BOYKIN: J.D. Vance literally called Donald Trump Hitler! What are you talking about? J.D. Vance said that himself.

REST OF NON-TRUMP TABLE: (INDISTINCT NOTATIONS ABOUT JD VANCE CALLING TRUMP HITLER)

DAVINSON: Should we not be surprised at where the Democrat Party is going?

PHILLIP: Kristen and also Ben, as we’ve played multiple times here, Trump has repeatedly called his Democratic opponents fascists. So that argument does not hold.

BOYKIN: And there’s a whole history of racism in the Republican Party. It started in the 90s.

Watch above via CNN NewsNight.