In an interview with Fox News' Tucker Carlson, one former aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) unloaded on the host for playing dumb on the campaign finance violations undertaken by Michael Cohen on behalf of the president.
"Stormy Daniels apparently said to Donald Trump through his attorney, 'give me money or I will embarrass you,'" Carlson said in his interview with Democratic activist Chris Hahn. "You just conceded that is extortion. If that happened to you I think you would consider it extortion."
"I think Stormy Daniels said 'I will tell' and the president said 'wait, let me give you money so you don't tell,' which is what happened with [Karen] McDougal and which may have happened with others and I think we are going to find out," Hahn responded — but the host cut him off and began raising his voice.
"The deal was extortion," Carlson rebutted. "I'm not defending this. I don't think the president is telling the truth about it, I think he probably did have a relationship with her. But it still extortion. So why are we excusing that?"
Exasperated, Hahn explained the definition of extortion to the host.
"Tucker, it's extortion if she asked him for the money," he said over the host's attempts to interrupt once again. "It's not extortion if he offered her the money. Let's be clear here."
The alleged crime at hand is not extortion, Hahn said, but that Cohen broke the law at the behest of Donald Trump — another legal issue Carlson appeared not to understand.
"Let me just ask you, the idea here — and it's a stupid idea, I would say — is that this was a campaign contribution and so the implication if it had come out that Trump had a relationship with a porn star, people would have been totally shocked and wouldn't have voted for him because that just doesn't sound like the Donald Trump they knew," the host said.
"That's ridiculous, actually," Carlson continued. "This wasn't a campaign contribution. This was hush money paid to a porn star and that's what it is. It's not a crime, it's embarrassing."
"According to what we heard in court yesterday, the president was concerned that this and other things would come out and he directed Michael Cohen to commit a campaign finance violation," Hahn said.
The host continued to push, imploring the former Schumer aide to "speak slowly" so he can understand how that would constitute a campaign finance violation — and the interview soon devolved into a screaming match.
Watch below, via Fox News:
