‘That’s Utter BS’: CNN’s John Avlon Slams GOP Senators Willing to Derail Border Deal to Please Trump

CNN commentator John Avlon dismissed any notion that derailing the border deal is anything but a campaign maneuver by former President Donald Trump on Friday.

During a discussion on CNN This Morning about Trump’s role in a bipartisan deal in the Senate on the border, former Republican strategist Lee Carter framed the pressure from Trump as a way to re-establish the ex-president’s “success” on his handling of the border:

I think there’s two ways of looking at this, right? There’s a lot of people who are saying that Trump is blocking the deal from happening. And that is one way that I think a lot of moderates are leaning, [presidential candidate] Nikki Haley’s certainly going to capitalize on that and so are the Democrats.

But then when you look at some of his solid base, they’re saying, “You know what? Trump is back. He’s going to make sure we’re tougher. We’re getting better deals. The deal wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t strong enough.” You’ve got [Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)] out there talking about how this deal is, he called it a “crap” deal. And so what they’re trying to position this as is saying, “No, we’re actually doing a tougher deal, and we’re going to say no to a deal that’s going to tie this to the Ukraine, and we’re going to make it stronger if we get it.”

Avlon wasn’t buying it, immediately saying, “But that’s utter B.S., and it’s important to point that out to folks.” He continued, calling those senators who might be tempted to bow to Trump as “fools”:

Donald Trump is trying to stop this deal from happening so he can stop bipartisanship and Biden from getting credit so he can campaign on the issue while it gets worse. Right? I mean, he is playing those supporters who care about the border for fools yet again. And a lot of folks on the far right of the party are doing that for their own political purposes as well. They learned from Donald Trump you’d rather demagogue an issue than deal with it. But so we shouldn’t say yes. That may be folks’ perception in the base, but they’re being drugged and deluded. So that’s important to point out.

Watch the video above via CNN.