CNN Republican put on the spot over GOP 'dissent' from Trump
CNN's John Berman ticked off the list of grumblings from GOP lawmakers over some of Donald Trump's recent actions that could "cross a line" and impede the president from accomplishing his agenda.
On Monday's News Central, Berman asked conservative commentator Scott Jennings about "the smattering of small dissent that we've heard over the last three of four days."
"You had your old boss, Scott, Mitch McConnell, voting no on Pete Hegseth. You've got Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton saying they wish that President Trump hadn't removed the security details from John Bolton and others. You got Chuck Grassley overnight saying, 'What's going on with President Trump illegally firing these inspectors general?' So, Scott, my question to you is, how much louder will dissent like this get? Might it get? And when do you think it will cross a line that it would impede President Trump from certain actions?" Berman asked.
Jennings responded that it was "natural" for a party with "such a broad constituency" to have some dissent.
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"If you have a few Republicans today criticizing on small issues here and there, that's different than if people en masse decided they didn't want to support the Trump agenda," Jennings said. "But the big ticket issues — taxes, energy, immigration — the things where they're really trying to change the country, 'A,' there's no dissent now, and 'B', I think there's going to be widespread support for what Trump's doing in the Republican Party. You'll see no dissent for that on Capitol Hill."
Liberal commentator Maria Cardona then said that the dissent means "zero" to Trump.
"I don't think he cares," Cardona said. "This is what we've seen from the very beginning — he is acting like an imperial president because he was handed an imperial presidency by the Supreme Court. And, frankly, all of this dissent now that you're talking about, John, really doesn't matter because, where was it before when Trump was very clear as to what he was going to do? So Scott is right. I mean, the agenda that President Trump put forward is no secret, and so all of this dissent right now, to me, kind of means nothing among their own party if they don't really do anything about it.