Former Trump Campaign Advisor Calls Trump’s Dictator Comments ‘Indefensible’ —Then Defends Them Anyway on CNN
CNN Contributor David Urban presents a unique voice on the many panel discussions in which he participates on the network. A former Trump campaign advisor offers a strong and reasonable conservative voice on a cable news outlet where he is often outnumbered ideologically.
During a Wednesday morning appearance on CNN News Central, anchor John Berman asked Urban and former Obama administration member Van Jones to opine on former President Donald Trump’s curious answer to Sean Hannity during Tuesday night’s Town Hall.
Hannity asked Trump, “Do you in any way have any plans whatsoever if reelected president to abuse power, to break the law, to use the government to go after people?” a clip of which aired to start the segment. Berman repeated the question verbatim, then noted how Trump “didn’t answer that question for five minutes. For five minutes. He obfuscated. Didn’t give a yes or no for five minutes. And when he finally did answer, the answer was dictator on day one.”
The subtext of Berman’s observation was that this was weird. Which it was.
Van Jones said mostly Van Jones things, but it was Urban — the quasi-pro-Trump voice — who was most interesting after Berman noted a New York Times report on Steve Bannon and Kash Patel insisting that revenge and retribution in a Trump second term was not just rhetoric.
“Yeah, it’s nuts, right? It’s crazy. And I can tell you firsthand that I know that the Trump campaign and the inner circle in the Trump campaign, which Kash Patel is not part of, is none too happy with those comments. Right?” Urban replied. “Because they’re they’re indefensible or they’re just clearly indefensible. And so to to be out there saying that there’s no way you can respond to it other than say it’s just wrong. Right. I mean, what he’s saying is wrong.”
Good for Urban to label the alleged abuse of power in a second term “indefensible,” but he then proceeded to do just that when Trump ostensibly did the same.
“You’ll say that in the campaign,” Berman pushed back. “I’ll say that, unfortunately, the candidate won’t say, well, that’s the problem.”
But then Urban defended the ex-President’s “Dictator on day one” comment, blaming Hannity for “kind of” twisting his arm:
To your point about what the former president said last night to Hannity, look, Hannity kind of twisted his arm a little bit and saying, you know, say Uncle Sam, Uncle Donald Trump and Donald Trump, you know, this van knows this. When Trump gets pushed in a corner, he’s not going to admit that he’s wrong. He’s not going to say that I did something wrong or said something wrong. He said, look, I’ll be a dictator. And so much is that I am going to close the border and so much that I am going to drill. If those things are being a dictator that I’m guilty of being a dictator. That was his answer. It was not an artful answer. He’s being too cute by half.
“That was after five minutes of not promising. He wouldn’t abuse power,” Berman reminded Urban.
“He was being too cute by half,” Urban replied. “And look, as we get closer and closer, the election is going to be more scrutiny. The only person that’s going to beat Donald Trump in this election is Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, not Nikki Haley. Donald Trump’s the only guy who can beat himself.”
Watch above via CNN.
