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CNN’s Scott Jennings had a heated exchange with liberal media outlet MeidasTouch’s Adam Mockler on Saturday morning over who exactly is responsible for recent instances of political violence.
“The radical left is causing this problem, not the right, the radical left, and it’s going to get worse, and ultimately it’s going to go back on them,” President Donald Trump told reporters Thursday.
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“I mean, bad things happen when they play these games and I’ll give you a little clue, the right is a lot tougher than the left, but the right is not doing this,” Trump continued. “They’re not doing it, and they better not get them energized.”
CNN’s “Table for Five” host Abby Phillip on Saturday called the president’s comment an “odd thing to say.”
Mockler, part of the show’s panel, took a more rigid stance, saying he’s “pretty tired of conservatives gaslighting about the current political environment and Donald Trump’s rhetoric, when all of this escalation can be traced back to his entrance into American politics.”
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He added that the president’s “claim to fame was saying that Obama wasn’t born in America.”
The internet personality accused the president of being “responsible for amping up the tension” in the U.S. This led to a response from Jennings, who was also part of the panel.
“So you think it’s Donald Trump’s fault that a deranged leftist climbed up to the top of a building and shot up the ICE facility, not once now, but twice in Texas,” Jennings said, referencing Joshua Jahn, 29, who was arrested after allegedly shooting at a Dallas ICE facility, killing one detainee.
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When Mockler reiterated his position that Trump has “amped up the tension in America,” Jennings asked, “Can’t you just take responsibility for it?”
“Wait, me?” Mockler asked, amid cross-talk. “You want me to take more responsibility than the president of the United States? I’m a 22-year-old YouTuber, dude.”
Jennings echoed right-wing claims that there is an “epidemic of left-wing violence,” citing conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting and the arson incident at Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s mansion.
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Jennings said it’s not the president’s fault “the left has radicalized to the point of saying, ‘We’re done talking and we’re gonna start shooting.’”
Jennings stood by his claims on X, stating “the left can gaslight all they want, but it is NOT President Trump’s fault that Charlie Kirk got m*rdered. It’s not his fault that ICE agents are getting shot at in broad daylight.”
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Earlier this month, the Department of Justice deleted a study that documented the frequency of far-right violence and stated it outpaced “all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.”
Days after the study was removed, Trump signed an executive order designating the Antifa movement a terrorist organization. Antifa, short for “anti-fascist,” is a decentralized movement composed of loose collections of groups against fascist ideology.
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Mockler later defended his argument with Jennings in a post on X, saying Trump’s allies are inventing an “epidemic of left wing violence” in a “pathetic attempt to blind us to his vitriol.”
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“Donald Trump was just vomiting vitriol out of his mouth about how the other party is weak and evil, and he just said, ‘the party of hate, evil and Satan,’” Mockler told Jennings on CNN. “You blind yourself to that, and you’re focusing on a 22-year-old YouTuber.”