Tapper Tees Off on Trump Scandal Cycle After Mulvaney Presser: ‘Never Happened… Maybe It Happened… OK It Happened…’

CNN’s Jake Tapper and his panel went off on the Trump administration today after Mick Mulvaney‘s presser yesterday and subsequent walkback on Ukraine.

Kaitlan Collins said Mulvaney put Republicans “in a bind” after they’d been saying for weeks there was no quid pro quo.

“People inside the White House were texting me, a lot of the president’s allies were incredibly critical of Mick Mulvaney, including Sean Hannity, who described I believe what he did as dumb, and essentially they just don’t understand what the strategy was in Mick Mulvaney coming out and making those remarks,” Collins reported, “and now the White House is saying that Mick Mulvaney has clarified what he said. He has not clarified. He’s denying saying what he said on camera.”

Tapper brought up the rough transcript of the call at the center of all this, combined with testimony from various officials in the past week, remarking, “We very clearly see the quid pro quo.”

Nia-Malika Henderson said Mulvaney’s comments were “startling” but they were also “in line” with facts that were already out there.

Tapper looked at what point in the Trump White House response cycle we’re currently in:

“The Trump scandals seem to go like this. ‘That never happened.’ ‘Okay, maybe it happened a little bit.’ ‘Okay, it happened, but there’s nothing wrong with it.’ ‘You did it.’ And then ‘get over it.’ And I thought we had reached point three of ‘Okay, yeah, fine, it happened, but there’s nothing wrong with it,’ which is pretty standard for Trump scandals, but apparently not.”

You can watch above, via CNN.

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