‘He Wasn’t Musing’: CNN Host Trashes MAGA Panelist’s Take on Trump’s Gaza Comments
CNN host Abby Phillip took her NewsNight panelist Scott Jennings to task over the way he waved away concerns about President Donald Trump’s comments about seizing Gaza.
The panel were responding to comments Trump made Tuesday in which he said the “U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip” and vowed to turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” He also refused to rule out deploying U.S. troops in the effort, which would permanently displace the enclave’s 2 million Palestinian residents.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Trump said in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
On CNN, Phillip asked Jennings if he agreed with the assessment of another panelist—Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal—who claimed that international law is “dead” as they discussed Trump’s Gaza plan.
“I think we’re being a little dramatic and we’re on our jump-to-conclusions mat here a little bit,” Jennings, an ardent supporter of Trump, answered. “He muses occasionally, and—”
Phillip quickly interrupted to say: “Look, Scott, just to be clear because you’re suggesting that we are making this or exaggerating it...”
Jennings hit back to say Phillip was “putting words” in his mouth and continued: “I‘m saying you and I both know he muses occasionally. And he‘s aspirational, and he says provocative things occasionally.”
The reasoning didn’t sit well with the host, who immediately dived back in. “Look, I really don‘t want to interrupt you, but I think I have to come to my own defense here in saying Donald Trump, with his own words, said this is what he wants to do,” she explained.
“He wasn‘t musing. He was looking down at a piece of paper. I‘ve been in a room with him, just like that, with foreign leaders looking down at a piece of paper. He is reading a statement that was prepared for him. Those are not musings.”
Jennings’ apparent position that Trump may have been merely shooting from the hip came despite Trump himself saying at the news conference that he had been exploring the idea “very closely over a lot of months.”
YouTube commentator Brad Polumbo also called Jennings out over the issue, citing Trump’s election campaign promises to end wars. “Well, Scott, what happened to America first?” Polumbo asked. “This is the guy who was supposed to take us out of the endless wars.”
Jennings replied by saying that Palumbo was “playing the role of Catherine tonight,” an apparent reference to Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell. Last month, Rampell dared Jennings to recreate on air the straight-armed salute that Elon Musk gave at a Trump inauguration event after Jennings defended the Tesla billionaire’s actions.
On Tuesday, Jennings argued that Trump is the only person in the world “speaking positively about this particular geography right now.”
He mentioned Trump hosting the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and between Israel and Bahrain in September 2020, and said the “current management” in the region is failing.
“He‘s always thought positively and aspirationally about the Middle East. And I would just ask all of you, all who are enraged about this, how’s it going right now?” Jennings said. “How‘s the current management doing? Terrible.”
That take in turn led to a clash with Jebreal, who slammed Jennings for not putting “in perspective the history of that region before October 7th [2023],” when Hamas attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking over 250 hostages. Over 47,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza in the ensuing conflict which was largely halted by a ceasefire reached last month.