CNN’s Scott Jennings Lashes Out at ‘Racial’ Accusation Amid Trump-Epstein Fracas
CNN GOP analyst Scott Jennings lashed out at what he called a “racial” accusation as he defended President Donald Trump’s association with deceased sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein by calling it “an IQ test” and urging a fellow panelist not to “fail it.”
After a monumental flip by Trump, both the House of Representatives and the Senate approved a bill to release the Epstein Files in a near-unanimous vote on Tuesday. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) was the only “nay” vote in either chamber.
On Tuesday night’s edition of CNN NewsNight, anchor Abby Phillip convened a panel consisting of Jennings, pollster Josh Doss, Lydia Moynihan, Tezlyn Figaro, and The Black List founder Franklin Leonard to discuss the development.
Jennings drew rebukes from around the table over the logic of his defense of Trump, which he posited as a test of intelligence that he urged Leonard not to “fail”:
LEONARD: I would like to see the evidence. What I’m saying is —
JENNINGS: You think after 10 years of public life, you wouldn’t know it already?
LEONARD: No, I don’t. That’s exactly the point.
JENNINGS: Oh my goodness.
LEONARD: Scott —
JENNINGS: This is an I.Q. test. Don’t fail it. Come on, man. Ten years, Donald Trump has been in public life.
LEONARD: That’s embarrassing, Scott. For —
PHILLIP: Scott, it is an I.Q. test. I mean, for ten years, we haven’t heard any names. So, you really think that no one’s involved?
JENNINGS: No. Obviously, Larry Summers was involved. Stacey Plaskett was involved. There’s kinds of people involved with Jeffrey Epstein.
PHILLIP: If someone was involved, we would know about it. They would be prosecuted. It would be done and dusted. The last 10 years, no one has been prosecuted for this. Is that a sign that nothing has happened?
JENNINGS: No, absolutely not.
PHILLIP: So then why do you think that that is the case?
JENNINGS: My question directly — my question directly to him is, if you think after ten years, three presidential campaigns and Democrats unleashing holy hell on him you wouldn’t know about —
PHILLIP: Scott, answer your own question.
Minutes later, Doss revisited the exchange, and Jennings bristled at the notion that his mention of an IQ test was in any way “racial”:
JOSHUA DOSS, POLLSTER AND POLITICAL RESEARCHER: Just real quick, I just want to bring it back to something that just happened. I feel like I just heard Scott calling into question this black man’s intelligence with the I.Q. test. I feel like I heard that. And so I just want to say something. This is what it sounded like.
JENNINGS: You want to make it racial, go ahead, but it’s ridiculous.
DOSS: Well, I mean, I think that there —
JENNINGS: By the way, we know each other and we’re friends. I know this man. He’s a smart guy and we’re having a debate. We’re having a debate.
DOSS: I would love to finish what I’m saying.
JENNINGS: Don’t make it into something — we don’t even know each other.
DOSS: This actually relates back to the topic that we’re having, Scott. There is a — you are sitting here with so much confidence without seeing all of the documents that Donald Trump is innocent. There is a presumption of presumption of guilt that a black man walks around the United States that I have been watching Donald Trump navigate this situation with the presumption of innocence that is never, never afforded to us, right? This is the same guy that is trailing 29 rape allegations, and we have videos of him saying things like, grab him by the, you know what. Just the very fact that he’s connected, documented, connected to the country’s most egregious pedophile enough, that fact alone is enough for us to ask questions about if it’s a disqualifying factor for leadership.
So, I just don’t know why you’re so fervent right now saying that, I know for a fact he has nothing. Can we see the files and make that decision?
PHILLIP: Scott?
JENNINGS: Look, here’s what I think it’s been going on for ten years. If there was a shred of anything to know about Donald Trump, we would already know it. What do we know? We know — I’m answering your question.
DOSS: Evidence is not the evidence of absence.
JENNINGS: We know that Donald Trump knew Jeffrey Epstein, and we know that he excommunicated him from Mar-a-Lago and his life. We also know that after Epstein was convicted that powerful Democrats continued to stay in touch with Jeffrey Epstein. This is not a story about Trump. It is a story about powerful men. Many of them are in the Democratic Party. We’re going to find that out. You can’t wash away the politics.
Watch above via CNN NewsNight.
