Jake Tapper Delivers Blistering Commentary on the State of the Republican Party: ‘If You Cross the President, You Actually Fear for Your Life’
CNN’s Jake Tapper went off Wednesday on the Republican party — by invoking one Trump loyalist making a list of who’s supporting the president and one prominent Pennsylvania GOP official talking about receiving threats as a result of opposing the president.
Tapper spoke with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and they noted how Congressman Mike Johnson is not only asking Republicans to join him in an effort to back the Texas attorney general’s election lawsuit, but is making a list of who is joining in to give to the president.
Tapper pointed out that the Texas lawsuit “is not taken seriously by any credible legal experts on the left or the right.” Despite all the criticism and mockery though, seventeen other state AGs are joining in.
He also said one Republican congressman was alarmed by Johnson’s email and asked, “Are we the party of list-making now?”
Nia-Malika Henderson said Republicans don’t want to cross Trump even though he’s lost, and so “they’re going to do everything they can to show this president loyalty, they’re going to do that because they know if they don’t, this president will tweet something, maybe he will back a primary challenger against them.”
Tapper noted there have been some exceptions before bringing up Kim Ward, a Republican serving as majority leader in the Pennsylvania Senate. Ward gave a pretty grim comment to the New York Times about the president’s election fight:
64 Republicans in the General Assembly signed a letter last week urging Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation to reject the state’s Electoral College votes for Mr. Biden.
Kim Ward, the Republican majority leader of the Pennsylvania Senate, said the president had called her to declare there was fraud in the voting. But she said she had not been shown the letter to Congress, which was pulled together hastily, before its release.
Asked if she would have signed it, she indicated that the Republican base expected party leaders to back up Mr. Trump’s claims — or to face its wrath.
“If I would say to you, ‘I don’t want to do it,’” she said about signing the letter, “I’d get my house bombed tonight.”
Tapper brought up her stunning quote and said, “This is where the Republican party is now. If you cross the president, you actually fear for your life.”
He closed by saying the attempts to overturn the election are proving to be a “clownish… failed attempt at a coup.”
You can watch above, via CNN.
