CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday repeatedly called out Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) to his face for trying to spin former president and current GOP nominee Donald Trump’s latest divisive rhetoric.
Tapper asked Youngkin if he supported Trump’s comments about using the military against American citizens and people who he described as “radical left lunatics.”
Youngkin repeatedly tried to claim Trump was referring to undocumented migrants. Tapper, though, pushed back multiple times, noting how Trump had actually named one of the so-called “lunatics” as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
“I’m just reading you his quote,” Tapper told Youngkin.
Youngkin claimed Tapper was “misinterpreting and misrepresenting his thoughts.”
“I’m literally reading his quotes,” Tapper said. “I’m literally reading his quotes to you and I played them earlier so you could hear that they were not made up by me. He’s literally talking about, quote, ‘radical left lunatics,’ and then one of those ‘lunatics’ he mentioned was Congressman Adam Schiff.”
“I don’t believe that’s what he’s saying,” Youngkin countered in defense of Trump.
“I played the quote and I read it to you,” Tapper said at another point. “You can wish that he weren’t saying that, but that’s what he said.”
Tapper later said Youngkin didn’t “want to accept those quotes.”
Watch the full exchange here: