CNN’s Acosta Grills America First Comms Chief on Bringing Trump ‘Back to the Scene of the Crime’ for DC Speech: ‘What’s His Policy Going to Be? How to Do a Coup?’

CNN anchor Jim Acosta grilled Marc Lotter, the chief communications officer for the America First Policy Institute, over his organization’s decision to host former President Donald Trump to deliver a policy speech in Washington, D.C., calling it bringing him “back to the scene of the crime.”

Trump will be the keynote speaker at AFPI’s “America First Agenda Summit” on Tuesday, and the organization posted a tweet earlier this month welcoming the former president back to Washington.

Welcome back to Washington!🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/0YBv2gKwsW

— America First Policy Institute (@A1Policy) July 14, 2022

The conference will be Trump’s first visit to the nation’s capital since the ignominious end to his presidency, days after his supporters violently attacked the U.S. Capitol during the certification of the Electoral College votes electing Joe Biden president.

During Sunday’s episode of CNN Newsroom, Acosta asked Lotter, who previously served as the strategic communications director for Trump’s 2020 campaign, why AFPI was bringing Trump back to Washington after he “tried to pull off a coup” there.

“He’s still the leader of the ‘America First’ movement,” Lotter replied, and “the visionary behind many of the policies that got him elected to the White House.”

The American people were “clamoring for that leadership back,” Lotter continued, on issues like the economy and gas prices. “So to give voice to that agenda, to lay it out for the congressional midterms and beyond, I think there’s nobody better than the former president to be able to do that.”

“But it’s like he’s returning to the scene of the crime,” Acosta retorted.

“He left office –” Lotter began.

“He incited an insurrection,” Acosta interjected. “Why even bring him to Washington?”

Trump did leave office on Jan. 20, Lotter said, and what happened next would be “entirely up to the voters,” Trump, and any other candidates who might get into the 2024 presidential race, before pivoting back to saying that Trump’s policies “worked.”

Policy debate aside, Acosta commented that many Republicans — even including some former Trump advisers — were saying that Trump had “eviscerated his legacy when he tried to pull off a coup on January 6.”

“So why bring him to Washington?” Acosta asked. “Isn’t there something just wrong about Donald Trump showing up in Washington after what happened on January 6?”

Former presidents still “hold a certain standing,” Lotter replied, and still gave speeches to outline their “policy vision.”

Trump was a different case than former presidents like George W. Bush or Barack Obama, Acosta insisted.

Lotter said that was “in the minds of the media,” and it would be up to the voters to decide his standing, if he decided to run again. Trump still had the ability to “lead that charge from a policy standpoint,” Lotter said.

“The problem is he led the charge on January 6,” Acosta pressed. “He called insurrectionists off to the Capitol and they defaced, defecated — our democracy.”

The events of Jan. 6 were not what the American people were worried about, Lotter said, instead “talking about gas prices and grocery store prices and worried about the economy” instead of watching the House Select Committee hearings.

Acosta mentioned how the latest hearing had shown Trump staying “holed up watching television more than three hours, unwilling to tell the insurrectionists to go home because they were, quote, his people…never made a single call to law enforcement, the Pentagon, even to check on his own vice president, Mike Pence.”

After some back and forth about various revelations from the hearings, and Acosta getting Lotter to acknowledge that Trump did lose the election, Acosta noted that Trump himself still refused to say that Biden won, and many Republicans who had supported him had now lost faith in him.

“I think the key overarching issue here, Marc, why bring Donald Trump to Washington?” Acosta asked. “Why bring him to Washington if he’s still at these rallies, these speeches, saying these cockamamie things that he won the election and it was stolen from him — why bring him to the nation’s capitol?”

“It’s more akin to the State of the Union where he will lay out his vision,” said Lotter.

“What’s his policy going to be?” asked Acosta. “How to do a coup?”

Lotter answered by mentioning gas prices, salaries, border security, “the things on the minds of the American people.”

” You don’t think there’s something crass about bringing Donald Trump here?” Acosta pressed.

“I think as a citizen you have your right to voice your opinion, to lay your policy vision whether it’s in New York City or anywhere in the heartland,” said Lotter, and Trump was “the leader of the America First movement.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.