'He's incapable of rising above': Dem strategist shuts down Trump ally over bipartisanship

President Donald Trump is visiting North Carolina and California to assess the damage from last year's hurricane and ongoing wildfires, and a pair of CNN commentators debated whether he could keep politics out of his tours.

The president is making his first trips Friday of his second term by touring damage from Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and then seeing communities devastated by fires in the Los Angeles area, and Trump ally Madison Gesiotto praised his reported invitation to Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) – which he ended up denying shortly after her remarks aired.

"Yeah, definitely not expected," Gesiotto said of the purported invitation, "but I think anytime we can see bipartisanship, especially in a time of natural disaster, is very important. But, of course, Trump going in this morning to California, and he's been very critical of many of the Democrats in that state, including [Gov. Gavin] Newsom, and of course, wildfire management isn't the only criticism he's had of him. He's been very hard on him on elections, too. You know, here in Ohio, we have free and fair elections. It's very easy to vote, it's very hard to cheat, and we count our votes very quickly. California, not so much. I mean, they were still counting into December. They mail out tens of millions of ballots that aren't even requested, and so he's hit Newsom very hard on this."

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"We saw Trump work very well with Newsom in certain instances during that first administration," she added. "I think we'll continue to see the same, but it may not look the same as it once did, and so I think that will be something interesting to watch this morning in California and moving forward in this administration."

Shortly after Gesiotto's appearance on CNN, Trump spoke to reporters before boarding Marine 1 and denied inviting Schiff to tour California with him, which seemingly bolstered comments made by Democratic strategist Matt Bennett in response to her praise for the president.

"I think the odds of him rising above are about the same as the [Buffalo] Bills winning by a billion, which is to say, zero," Bennett said, referring to the AFC championship matchup against the Kansas City Chiefs. "He never rises above, he is incapable of rising above. The only thing that matters to Trump is his own interest and his own personal grievances, so he will not. If you think back to the first term where he was supposed to be the consoler-in-chief, when terrible things happened, natural disasters or mass shootings. I mean, remember the image of him standing with the baby who had just been orphaned in a mass shooting with his thumb up and smiling?"

"He does not know how to have human empathy, and when he goes to these places, he's very bad at it," Bennett added, "so guarantee that he will take shots at the governor, and he will not provide the kind of comfort that a normal president would in a place like Los Angeles right now."

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