CNN’s Jake Tapper Confronts Hilton With Trump Rant on Election: ‘That’s Nonsense, Right?’

CNN anchor Jake Tapper confronted California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton (R-CA) over President Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud, saying “That’s nonsense, right?”

Hilton was a guest on Friday’s edition of CNN’s The Lead, during which Tapper played a clip of Trump claiming credit for Hilton’s victory over the alleged and false fraud:

TAPPER: So President Trump has claimed that California’s slow vote count, which is very slow —

HILTON: Very slow.

TAPPER: — is evidence of voter fraud. There is no evidence that it is evidence of voter fraud. You even downplayed the notion of voter fraud during your campaign. I want you to take a listen to what President Trump has said about the fact that you advance to the final round.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I called up the very powerful, very good U.S. attorney in California and I said, do me a favor, take a look. They’re trying to steal that election too. About an hour after the call, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Hilton has won. So had I not made that call, Steve Hilton would right now be looking — watching the election from home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: I mean, that’s nonsense, right? He said it again today, by the way. That’s not. I mean, he might have called, but you won —

HILTON: Right. I don’t know.

TAPPER: You won because you won. It had nothing to do with him calling the U.S. attorney.

HILTON: Honestly, I have no idea about any of those conversations. I haven’t spoken to the president or the U.S. attorney. The point I would make about this, there’s clearly something we need to fix about the system that means that it’s so slow. The New York Times, they had a really powerful editorial on this which I strongly agree with. We can make the system faster while retaining people’s confidence in it and keeping the accessibility of voting, which is incredibly important.

That’s all true, but we were very concerned to make sure for our supporters that, you know, their hard work wasn’t in any way compromised by a process that couldn’t be trusted. So we had teams looking at everything and we didn’t see anything that would give us cause for concern. I don’t know whether the resources of the Justice Department will turn anything up, but we don’t see anything that was a problem.

TAPPER: All right, Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, thanks so much for joining us. And a reminder to Xavier Becerra, you are invited to come on the show anytime.

HILTON: And to debate me anytime.

TAPPER: Especially on the show, on this very show.

Watch above via CNN’s The Lead.

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