Democratic Strategist Asks Former Trump Comms Aide, ‘Don’t You Get Tired of Cleaning Up for These Guys?’

Democratic strategist Keith Boykin asked Republican communications strategist Bryan Lanza if he ever tires of doing cleanup for GOP politicians who step in it.

At issue was Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance standing by Tucker Carlson after the former Fox News host gave a friendly interview to revisionist pseudo-historian Darryl Cooper. In an interview on Carlson’s show on X, where verified Nazi accounts tweet unencumbered by content moderation, Cooper claimed it was not the Nazis’ intent to kill so many people. At one point, he even put the demise of the murdered in the passive voice, stating that they “ended up dead.” Cooper also called Winston Churchill the “chief villain” of World War II.

Carlson called Cooper “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.”

“Senator Vance doesn’t believe in guilt-by-association cancel culture, but he obviously does not share the views of the guest interviewed by Tucker Carlson,” a Vance spokesperson said. “There are no stronger supporters of our allies in Israel or the Jewish community in America than Senator Vance and President Trump.”

On Friday’s CNN NewsNight, Lanza, who was the deputy communications director for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, dinged Vance’s camp for the response.

“I think he missed an opportunity,” he said. “I have a lot of friends in politics… and friends say stupid things all the time. Tucker said something stupid. The right thing for JD would’ve been to say, ‘Hey, you know, Tucker let’s be abundantly clear. Hitler was one of the most evil people in the world. And anybody that comes and says anything differently is somebody that we shouldn’t take serious. That would have been the correct action to take.”

Lanza then pivoted to say the interview in question and Vance’s response is a distraction from more important issues:

LANZA: We’d be having a conversation about immigration. We’d be having a conversation about inflation. We’d be having a conversation about things that matter to everyday people. And they’re not sort of focusing on this Tucker conversation.

BOYKIN: But don’t you get tired of cleaning up for these guys over and over again? I mean, you come on TV and you say all the things that they should’ve said, but they never say those things themselves.

LANZA: But that’s the nature of the business, right? I was I was a Democrat during Bill Clinton. I had to do a lot of cleanup during the, during that era too. So that’s politics. You always have to clean up certain mistakes of the candidates that you support.

BOYKIN: I mean Donald Trump’s cleanups and Bill Clinton’s cleanups are totally different messaging issues you’re talking about,” Boykin said. “Donald Trump and J.D Vance are consistently saying things. They are not trying to expand the tent. So, that’s what’s so problematic. Politics is about addition, it’s not about subtraction.”

LANZA: “I view it– politics more today is very much about subtractions because the minute you make a policy decision, you lose people immediately.

BOYKIN: But these aren’t policy decisions.

[CROSSTALK]

BOYKIN: Sitting next to a Holocaust denier is not a policy position.

LANZA: That’s a bad decision. But I would say, what I’ve learned in politics and what I learned very early from an elected official and one of my first bosses in this space, he said that for every decision you make, you make one temporary friend and 10 permanent enemies. That’s the politics I know. So, when you say politics is a game of addition, I’ve never viewed it that way.

Watch above via CNN.