‘Pretty Rich’: CNN’s Jake Tapper Zings Trump For Attacking Losing Candidate ‘Claiming Victory’
CNN anchor Jake Tapper zinged former President Donald Trump attacking ex-Amb. Nikki Haley for “claiming victory” after losing in New Hampshire.
Trump was declared the victor in Tuesday night’s New Hampshire primary, and delivered what Tapper described as an “angry” victory speech in which he said, of Haley, “Who the hell was the impostor that went up on the stage before and like claimed a victory?”
On Wednesday’s edition of CNN’s The Lead, Tapper interviewed Haley backer Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) and was amused by the irony of election-denying Trump making such a comment as he asked Sununu for his reaction to the criticism:
TAPPER: I want to get your reaction to something Donald Trump said last night during his victory speech. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: Who the hell was the impostor that went up on the stage before and like claimed a victory? She did very poorly actually. She had to win. The governor said, she’s going to win, she’s going to win, she’s going to win. Then she failed badly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: I have to say, it is obviously pretty rich for Donald Trump to make any comments about a second place candidate claiming victory. But what’s your response?
SUNUNU: Right, well, you hit the first point right there. Look, at the end of the day, the polls that she was going to lose my 25, right? And she got it within, you know, 10, 11 points, whatever it was. So, she’s constantly surging and constantly outperforming.
So he just wants everyone to clear — clear the ranks and give him the coronation. But — and Ronna McDaniel is completely wrong by the way, right? When the head of the Republican Party says we’ve had the voters in two states have their say, we’ll ignore the Republicans in the other 48 states. We’re just going to ignore them and just tell Trump that he’s the winner, right?
So these are just establishment Washington politicians galvanizing around Trump. He used to be a disrupter, right? He used to be the guy that’s going to challenge Washington. Now, he’s just part of this elite-ism, if you will, out of the Republican Party in Washington, D.C.
No one wants to tell the — tell the Senate what to do. They’re basically an out-of-place nursing home, if you think of it that way. He’s going to be their next resident.
Nikki’s the next-generation. She’s exciting. She brings energy. She brings this is great conservative record to the table.
That scares him, right? Because he knows that that can surge, that it’s going to have energy.
TAPPER: Does she have to win in South Carolina? I mean, I can understand the motivation for a candidate who doesn’t win the first three contests. Don’t you think it’s do or die there?
SUNUNU: I don’t and I tell you why. New — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina are always the filtering states if you think of it that way, right? We always want to narrow it down. Now, she narrowed it down way faster than anyone thought. I do think when you get to Super Tuesday, you have to win. You’ve got to win some states in Super Tuesday, I don’t think South Carolina is a must-win, but I have no doubt she’s going to do very, very well there.
Watch above via CNN’s The Lead.
