'No you didn't, ma'am': MAGA Republican tries to steamroll CNN anchor to her face
A CNN host on Friday had a tough time reining Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) back into the conversation about the devastating market losses that continued for a second straight day once the topic of the network’s treatment of Joe Biden emerged.
The spirited back-and-forth ignited on CNN’s “The Arena with Kasie Hunt" after the host peppered the Republican lawmaker with questions surrounding the effects that President Donald Trump’s massive set of tariffs are having on his Tennessee district.
But then she got to a simple question: “Is this Donald Trump's economy now?”
“Well, I don't know that I’d call it that – are you going to call it that when it turns around?” Burchett asked as a stunned Hunt replied: “Really?”
He added: “I haven't seen on CNN too many times that you all had a panel railing on Joe Biden when the average American, well average east Tennessean, and was paying 600 more dollars a month out of pocket because of crazy deficit spending that we were doing and sending money overseas, borrowed money to do that…”
ALSO READ: 'Came as a surprise to me': Senators 'troubled' by one aspect of government funding bill
That’s when Hunt jumped back in to offer Burchett an on-air fact-check, telling him she was sitting at the CNN anchor desk with a former Biden aide who, she added, “was in a number of tough situations where we talked plenty, plenty about those issues.”
But Burchett wasn't buying it.
"No, no you didn’t, ma'am, listen,” Burchett responded. “C’mon, c’mon. Joe Biden was mentally incompetent, and you all would never – you would always deny that…that was the biggest cover-up.”
Hunt laughed off the jabs thrown at the former president – and her network – before quickly shifting the interview back on topic.
“We started on the economy, that’s what we’re focused on,” she said.
Moments earlier, Burchett told Hunt that the “real enemy of America in the past has been Congress,” as he slammed deals cut “with the Chinese and others.”
“Congress has been pretty gutless, in my opinion, about going after them,” he concluded.