‘Is There Any Greater Irony?’ Kaitlan Collins Roasts Trump Complaining He’s Been Silenced While Speaking to Horde of Cameras
Kaitlan Collins led a panel discussion on Tuesday following Donald Trump’s latest courthouse rant, in which the former president repeated some of the same roundly debunked claims regarding the gag order in the case and his campaign schedule. Collins at one point asked her panel “is there any greater irony” than Trump complaining he has been barred from speaking publicly while addressing the media day after day from the courthouse.
“Obviously, Trump’s coming out and he can’t talk about David Pecker individually and go after what he just listened to for several hours, him on the witness stand. And clearly that’s bothering him,” Collins said to begin.
CNN’s Paula Reid replied, “Yeah, I was surprised that he started with the gag order. Clearly, that hearing did not go well for his attorneys earlier today, but he repeated some of the arguments that they either made in court or had hoped to make before he went off the rails, arguing that this is unconstitutional.”
“Defendants are routinely subject to gag orders if it is necessary,” Reid continued, adding:
But Trump’s argument is that cause he’s a candidate for the presidency, that anything he says or most of the things he says are political speech and enjoy a heightened protection. Now, this is an argument he and his team have used creatively in other criminal cases and have just not been successful. I don’t think that’s an argument that’s going to carry the day, but that is the point that he’s making that he believes that a gag order on a presidential candidate is unconstitutional. But this is unprecedented. To have a candidate for the White House as a criminal defendant, we’ve never been here before. Also, once again taking aim at the judge, suggesting that he is conflicted because his daughter works for a company that does fundraising for Democrats. Now the daughter is covered by the gag order. The judge is not.
Collins jumped in, “I mean, is there any greater irony than complaining about a gag order and saying it restricts you from speaking while you’re speaking to cameras and media? Who’s in the hallway?”
Phil Mattingly answered, “You know, he’s pushed the bounds on great ironies over the course of the last several years, 8 or 9 years. But this is definitely high up there.”
“I don’t think there’s any question, but also the idea of, you know, for somebody who wasn’t campaigning a lot heading into this trial, maybe once, once a week, once every couple of weeks, making very clear that he would have been campaigning on a very regular basis, that he not had to be involved in this trial, even though he voluntarily had gone to courthouses repeatedly over the course of the last several months and made that a central part of his campaign as well. And there’s no indication that either from a financial perspective or from a political perspective, they had grand plans to be traveling a lot. It is very clear he’s cold, he’s made that point several times,” Mattingly concluded.
Watch above via CNN.
