CNN’s Bakari Sellers Torpedoes Scott Jennings When He Works Himself Up Defending GOP for Standing By Herschel Walker
CNN analyst Bakari Sellers calmly rebutted a worked-up Scott Jennings, who defended Republican leaders for sticking with Senate candidate Herschel Walker despite significant flaws.
On Wednesday morning’s edition of CNN This Morning, Lemon and his political panel talked about the big political topic of the day: Walker’s loss to Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia’s Senate runoff.
Sellers pushed back on the idea that Walker was solely a creation of former President Donald Trump, arguing party leaders had a duty to “stand for something.”
Jennings got a bit heated at what he viewed as a “ridiculous” suggestion that parties should abandon candidates in the face of any “oppo file”:
BAKARI SELLERS: I can’t just say this was Trump’s candidate. I don’t think that’s fair. And I think that that’s not completely accurate. That’s rewriting history. Mitch McConnell endorsed Herschel Walker. Every time you saw him. It looked like one of those Eddie Murphy movies, you had two (inaudible) on his side.
DON LEMON: You had, you had two white guys basically flanking him.
SCOTT JENNINGS: Are you saying the Republicans should have abandoned him?
BAKARI SELLERS: Why not?
DON LEMON: No. But it looked like he needed. It looked like he needed a babysitter.
BAKARI SELLERS: Why not? I mean. But why not? I mean, like, there comes a point in time where we’re political parties on both sides have to stand for something. And I think that I think that Herschel Walker was below the bar. And I think that when people reevaluate this race, he was below the bar of every metric that we should use to determine who serves us. And so I don’t know whether or not to abandon him or not elect him or do whatever. But the fact that Rick Scott, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell…
POPPY HARLOW: Governor Kemp in the end.
BAKARI SELLERS: Governor Kemp, at the end, Nikki Haley, were all embracing him with open arms. And everybody knew that he was anti-intellectualism. Everybody knew he held a gun to his to his wife’s head. Everybody knew that he was paying for abortions. Everybody knew that he doesn’t do proper sentence structure. Everybody knew he doesn’t know what’s going on in Washington, D.C. And yet Republicans were like, “Well, he Black and he won a Heisman.”
SCOTT JENNINGS: So if I show up in a state and rattle off the oppo file on every mediocre or worse Democratic candidate you’re arguing, the Democratic Party should just walk away from it. That’s a ridiculous assertion! This is one of the most important states on the map. That’s not to say that Republicans had a great chance for a pickup, and you’re, you guys are arguing the party should just walk away? That’s not going to happen!
BAKARI SELLERS: No, no, no. There’s a oppo file, and then there’s a oppo dump truck. Right. And so the oppo file on all of us is probably this thick, right? What I’m saying is this goes beyond opposition research. This goes beyond, like, okay, he paid taxes in another state. These are character flaws that I believe are below the dignity of the United States Senate. Now, if you don’t believe that, that’s fine. And that’s where we will differ. But what I’m saying is that we have to begin to stand for something on both sides. And if we do not, we will continue to erode our very fundamental structures of democracy.
Watch above via CNN This Morning.
