Neera Tanden Trolls CNN’s Scott Jennings After Stunning Meltdown Over Trump and Jan 6

CAP Action CEO and former Biden senior adviser Neera Tanden trolled CNN analyst Scott Jennings after an on-air meltdown over President Donald Trump’s pardons of Jan. 6 rioters — and offered up a fact check as well.

Tanden and Jennings squared off on Tuesday’s edition of CNN NewsNight, during which Jennings melted down when Tanden compared the campaign of vandalism against Teslas with the January 6 riot, telling him, “So, when they do it to a Tesla dealership, it’s really bad. But when they do it to the halls of Congress, we should pardon them. Is that your position?”

After lashing out at Tanden, Jennings told her “I didn’t support what happened on January the 6th. I was one of the first Republicans who called it out. I don’t support the pardons.”

Jennings is correct that he was early to denounce Jan. 6, and then some. While Jennings pushes hard for Trump now, at the time he suggested Trump was too dangerous to remain in office, telling viewers on January 6 that “if that’s going to be his attitude for the next two weeks I’m very fearful of what other insurrection type activities.”

Years later, Jennings spent the fourth anniversary of the attack getting mocked on CNN for trying to divert attention to the Democrats and away from the Trump mob.

Tanden roasted Jennings and challenged him over his claim about the pardons in a series of X/Twitter posts following the fracas. She posted a clip of their argument and wrote, “Some men are so emotional.”

In other posts, she posted, “Jennings also didn’t really tell the truth here.”

“Tonight Scott Jennings chided me for not being aware he criticized the Jan 6th pardons. Turns out I didn’t hear about it because… he didn’t do it. Judge for yourself if this is criticism or rationalization. And it’s in the same network we were on tonight,” Tanden wrote above a clip from CNN’s coverage of Trump’s inauguration.

Here’s a longer version of the exchange, in which anchor Anderson Cooper asked him about the pardons:

COOPER: What about the — with the pardons? What’s your take on that?

JENNINGS: Here’s what I think. Were these people punished? Yes. Were they ruined financially? Yes. Did they spend time in jail? Yes. Have their lives been ruined? Absolutely.

And one of you said earlier, Van or Axe, that you think this sends a terrible signal that you can get away with things like this.

As though we’ve never had a moment, in recent American history, when people were not punished for rampaging around, when they shouldn’t have been. It was the summer of 2020.

And these people were actually punished.

VAN JONES: It’s a little bit different than you did.

JENNINGS: Those people were never even charged.

JONES: A, that’s not true at all. But it’s not–

JENNINGS: That’s not true.

JONES: Actually–

JENNINGS: Most charges were not–

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Well, let him answer.

JONES: But I do see it differently, in that I don’t like it when people tear up buildings at all. I’m not a part of some pro-riot pro- crime lobby.

But I really don’t like when people attack police officers. I really don’t like it at all. I’m the son of a police officer. My uncle’s a police officer. I don’t like it at all. If you attack a police officer, before you get any leading answer, before you get any support from this society, you should apologize. And they didn’t. And that’s wrong.

And you, yourself and others said you would have a problem if the violent ones were let go.

JENNINGS: Yes, I can see it. I agree.

JONES: And that’s my problem tonight.

JENNINGS: I agree. I don’t — I don’t like the idea, specifically, the people that attacked police. I’m in agreement with you on that.

JONES: Listen–

JENNINGS: But I do think it is important to note that these people, whatever they did, whether it was just accidentally walking in, or doing something much, much worse — Elliot, you can correct me if I’m wrong — most of them, if not all of them, did get punished, served some kind of time. And my assumption is virtually all them have had their lives effectively ruined by these arrests.

DAVID AXELROD: I thought there were hundreds of them, who have not actually been tried yet.

WILLIAMS: Several hundreds.

AXELROD: Yes.

WILLIAMS: I think it’s around 300–

AXELROD: Yes.

WILLIAMS: –who haven’t gone to trial yet.

Watch above via CNN.

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