A Democratic strategist laughed in a Republican's face Wednesday morning as he tried to cast President Joe Biden's rhetoric as offensive and inappropriate — and received a swift fact check from the CNN anchor serving as referee.
Julie Roginsky did not try to hide her disdain for Lance Trover, former spokesperson for Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND), and his argument that Biden's "garbage" comment was equivalent to former President Donald Trump's rhetoric casting foes as "the enemy within."
"I'm sorry — are you actually offended by what Joe Biden said?" Roginsky asked. "Are you going to use the same metric to say Donald Trump should not be calling people like me vermin?"
Roginsky admitted much frustration with media coverage of what she dubbed Biden's "word salad" comment on Tuesday in which he called it unconscionable to demonize Latinos.
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Biden later said he was referring to the joke of a supporter's — Tony Hinchcliffe, who called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage" at a Trump rally — and not supporters casting a ballot for the former president.
"We have now spent the last 12 hours talking about whether Joe Biden meant a possessive noun or a plural noun, we have not spent much time talking about the fact that the economy grew 2.8% under this administration," said Roginsky. "We have not talked about the fact that [Speaker] Mike Johnson wants to repeal Obamacare."
Roginsky argued it mattered little either way because the names on ballot belong to Vice President Kamala Harris — who has distanced herself from the claim — and Trump, who declined to condemn Hinchcliffe's joke.
"Donald Trump can say the worst things on earth, he can call Democrats vermin, he can call them the enemy from within, and people say, 'Well, that's just Trump being Trump and no big deal,'" said Roginsky.
"Are you going to distance yourself from your candidate, the one who's running to be president for the next four years? Or do you want to dwell on Joe Biden who you won't have to think about three months from now?"
Trover said he didn't like the "verbiage" from either campaign and condemned Harris' for drawing comparisons between Trump and authoritarian leaders.
"The Harris campaign has said time and again, tossed around the word 'Hitler,' they have tossed around 'fascism' for weeks and tossed around 'Nazis,'" Trover said. "I'm just saying, Joe Biden is the sitting president—"
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It was at this point anchor Joe Acosta jumped in to tell Trover he was wrong — and Roginsky laughed.
"Harris has not called Donald Trump a Hitler or a Nazi or anything like that," he said. "She has described him as a fascist and we just had Anne Applebaum, who was an expert on this from the Atlantic, on just a few moments ago, who said, 'You know, when Donald Trump is using terms like 'the enemy from within' to talk about political opponents in this country that, that is dangerous.'"
Trover stuck to his guns, arguing there was no reason for Democrats to hurl such accusations, which prompted Roginsky to list the Republicans and former Trump staffers who have called him a fascist.
She closed the segment with a lengthy rebuke to conservative lawmakers and operatives still supporting Trump's candidacy.
"Quite honestly, I don't mind debating these issues I just mind the hypocrisy where people are up in arms about Biden's word salad but can't bring themselves to distance themselves from the fact that Donald Trump refers to people as vermin and the enemy from within and basically threatens to arrest people like Gen. [Mark] Milley and put them put them up on treason charges," said Roginsky.
"If you don't think that's fascistic, if you don't think that's the kind of thing that autocrats the world over, as Anne Applebaum pointed out, do, then I don't know what kind of country you're looking for and what Republicans are looking for, because that's what we're sleepwalking into the minute you start equivocating Donald Trump and Joe Biden's rhetoric."
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