'Boggles the mind': CNN's Jake Tapper slams 'AWOL' Republicans tolerating Trump's efforts to stop Russia probe

CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday called out Congressional Republicans who have remained silent on Donald Trump’s repeated efforts to “insert himself” into the Russia investigation, telling host Brianna Keilar their tolerance for the president’s actions “boggles the mind.”



Tapper was discussing a report, published Wednesday by CNN, that revealed Trump asked Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein if the senior Department of Justice official is “on his team” during a December 2017 meeting at the White House.

“I want to say, it is impossible to imagine a Democratic president doing this and Republicans on Capitol Hill being as quiet as they are,” Tapper said reacting to the news. “And this is an issue that doesn’t have anything to do with partisan politics, it has to do whether or not you believe it’s acceptable that a president is going to try to insert himself into an investigation. There has been a long—traditionally and also just constitutionally, in a way—there’s a separation between the Justice Department.”

“There’s supposed to be an independence when it comes to investigations,” Tapper explained.

“The fact Republicans on Capitol Hill are tolerating this just boggles the mind,” the CNN host continued. “They are so quiet when they know—most of them—know better. They know that is was wrong.”

CNN’s Jim Sciutto noted the GOP had a sharply different reaction to the 2016 tarmac meeting between former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton. Tapper said that meeting was “entirely fishy, and Republicans were right to criticize it.

“And they’re AWOL,” he said of Trump’s attempts to steer the Russia probe.

Watch the video below, via CNN: