A one-time official in former President Donald Trump's administration was shut down on live television Tuesday morning by a CNN host fed-up with political "gaslighting."
Former senior White House advisor Matt Mowers faced off against anchor Kate Bolduan and Obama administration speech writer Terry Szuplat in a heated discussion about unacceptable rhetoric — and who was guilty of it.
"You still have Vice President [Kamala] Harris's campaign saying that [Project 2025] is a danger and threat to democracy and Donald Trump's subscribes to every word in it," Mowers argued. "It's the type of lies and gaslighting that does drive people's to start saying, 'Maybe I have to take my own hands' and that is the problem we have—"
"But Matt," Bolduan interrupted Mowers to speak over him, "Talking about gaslighting is exactly what I feel has been happening on our air."
Moments earlier, Bolduan had interviewed Trump campaign surrogate Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) and grilled him on his belief that Trump's false claims that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio did not constitute dangerous rhetoric.
"Donald Trump does not have a rhetoric problem," Donalds asserted.
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"Even Republicans who support him and are voting for him this election have basically begged him to tone it down," Bolduan replied.
When Bolduan replayed a clip from the Donalds interview and asked Mowers the same question, she received a similar answer.
"I'm not saying both parties shouldn't calm down," Mowers said. "But if you look at from the perspective of what Byron Donalds, what J.D. Vance are saying... the only candidate who has now successfully survived two assassination attempts is Donald Trump."
Trump indeed appears to have been targeted by two gunmen over the past two months — the first Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, who was shot dead after an attempt on July 13, and suspect Ryan Wesley Routh, the 58-year-old arrested on federal gun charges after shots rang out on the former president's Palm Beach golf club on Sunday.
Mowers suggested Trump had been targeted because of recent comments from Harris, who on Tuesday called out Trump for appointing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade — a decision the vice president said cost a 28-year-old Georgia mom her life.
"Women are bleeding out in parking lots, turned away from emergency rooms, losing their ability to ever have children again," Harris said in response to a ProPublica investigative report. "Now women are dying. These are the consequences of Donald Trump's actions."
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This is the statement Mowers equated with Trump's recent commentary on Harris after the apparent assassination attack.
"Under Comrade Kamala Harris, the Border will be WIDE OPEN and there will always be more people coming in, many of them terrorists and criminals, than jobs available," Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday. "KAMALA IS KILLING BLACK AND HISPANIC HERITAGE, SHE IS KILLING THEIR LEGACY AND THEIR RIGHTS."
Prompted by Bolduan, Szuplat joined the conversation to criticize Mowers, Vance, Donalds and Trump for, as he saw it, casting blame without considering the consequences of their own words.
"This is exactly what we just heard, it's exactly what I'm getting out," Szuplat said. "If all anyone does is get up and blame other people for this situation that we're never going to get out of this."
Szuplat didn't weigh in on political lines — but his advice on how to tone down political rhetoric targeted multiple tactics commonly deployed by Trump.
"We can stop...describing fellow human beings as animals," Szuplat said. "We can stop referring to fellow Americans who disagree with us as the enemy...who need to be crushed, who need to be destroyed."
