CNN's Audie Cornish tried to rein in a MAGA pundit after he derailed a political debate with his own personal obsession.
Arch-conservative billionaire Rick Jackson defeated Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in Georgia’s GOP gubernatorial primary Tuesday, and Cornish showed "CNN This Morning" panelists a campaign ad Jackson aired that showed him warning undocumented migrants who commit violent crimes that they would be "deported or departed."
"Set aside the death threat at the end of that," Cornish said. "I don't know if there's a Mongolian human trafficking ring going on, but what I hear is culture war. It was not gas prices, it was not affordability – it wasn't any of those things. Is the return of a culture war argument a weakness for Democrats?"
Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright opened up the discussion, saying he wasn't sure whether changing the subject from the economy to culture war issues would hurt Democrats in the midterms.
"I think the Republican primary contests have been about who can be most loyal or who can wrap their arms most around Donald Trump," Seawright said. "I think on the Democratic side, it has been a generational divide and ideological conversation, and I think both of those things will look different in a general election. What I will tell you is I think the ice is melting in the Donald Trump cup. I think he's had a chilling effect on the Republican primaries. But we saw in Iowa, we saw in Georgia."
Cornish interrupted to ask whether that dynamic was why Republicans were falling back on culture war topics.
"Their candidates would turn to those kinds of messages that do resonate instead of focusing on, 'Here's what Trump did, this is a referendum on him – Let's have a fight about the Iran war,'" she said. "What they're saying is, 'Hey, remember how you hate those people and that people and these people shouldn't come over the border – we should go back to that conversation.'"
Seawright agreed that GOP candidates couldn't run away from Trump's unpopular economy, and voters have consistently said they're unhappy with affordability and fuel costs, and anti-trans crusader Terry Schilling jumped in with an illustration of the culture war obsessions driving conservative politics.
"Here's where it gets challenging for for your party, Antjuan, is you guys are going to have a really hard time arguing about affordability when you can't get a single Democrat in the House or the Senate to vote against taxpayer-funded sex change procedures, sex rejection procedures," Schilling said. "These procedures are hundreds of thousands of dollars."
Schilling and Seawright talked over one another as the Democrat argued that Americans broadly rejected Trump's economic policies and were concerned about affordability, while the right-wing activist insisted that rejecting LGBTQ rights was more important to voters.
"Let's pause for a second," Cornish interjected, ushering the segment into a commercial break. "Because we weren't talking about trans health care, and I feel like that we're going on a journey here, Terry. So let's let's journey back to the news today after the break."
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