Lara Trump Defends President Going After Gov. Whitmer: He Wasn’t Provoking People, ‘He Was Having Fun at a Trump Rally’

CNn’s Jake Tapper opened his interview with Trump 2020 campaign senior adviser Lara Trump Sunday confronting her over President Donald Trump continuing to attack Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer following the recent thwarted kidnapping attempt on her.

Tapper showed clips from the rally, including the chants of “lock her up” that the president enjoyed and the moment when he remarked, “I guess they said she was threatened. And she blamed me!”

A few days ago in an interview the president accused Whitmer of wanting to be a “dictator.”

Whitmer tweeted after the president’s rally, “This is exactly the rhetoric that has put me, my family, and other government officials’ lives in danger while we try to save the lives of our fellow Americans. It needs to stop.”

Tapper asked Lara Trump, “I understand he disagrees with her policies to contain the virus. Why does he continue to use such heightened rhetoric at a time when her life was literally in danger, according to the FBI?”

Trump said it was “the president’s Department of Justice that actually thwarted this attack against Gretchen Whitmer,” saying, “No one should ever feel threatened, no one should ever have this thing happen to them. This was awful to happen to her.”

She went on to say that “people are frustrated around America” and in Michigan in particular, saying people are frustrated with the lockdowns.

Tapper pressed again on the threats the governor has received. Trump said she’s been the target of threats too and said, “This is not just on one side.”

“Anything against you or your family or your children is horrible. Detestable,” Tapper said. He condemned the threats against her and asked, “Shouldn’t everybody just tone it down, including your father-in-law?”

“He wasn’t doing anything, I don’t think, to provoke people to threaten this woman at all,” Trump responded. “He was having fun at a Trump rally. And quite frankly, there are bigger issues than this right now for everyday Americans. People want to get the country reopened. They want to get back to work. Not only are we trying to make it through a pandemic, but think about all of the cancers that have gone unaddressed, think about the kids that aren’t in school who use school to get their one meal a day. There are issues at hand here that are bigger than just keeping everybody locked down. So I think people are frustrated and, look. The president was at a rally. It’s a fun, light atmosphere. Of course he wasn’t encouraging people to threaten this woman.”

You can watch above, via CNN.

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