Donald Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort appeared on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday morning, where he accused host Jake Tapper and CNN as a whole of focusing on Trump’s gaffs instead of the “real story.” The confrontation began when Tapper repeatedly asked Manafort about Trump’s seeming unwillingness to stay on message.
“One of the reasons that Mr. Trump’s message about the economy on Monday was sidetracked was of course when he raised the possibility of ‘second amendment people’ taking matters into their own hands to stop Clinton from appointing pro-gun-control Judges,” which was interpreted as a threat, Tapper said.
The host went on to stress that many people beyond reporters — including Trump supporters and other Republicans — interpreted Trump’s comments the same way. Manfort denied that people took Trump’s comments as a threatening.
“You could have covered what he was saying, or you could try and take an aside and take the Clinton narrative and play it out, and you chose to do that instead. There’s plenty of news to cover this week that I haven’t seen covered. You had information coming out about pay for play out of e-mails of Hillary Clinton’s that weren’t turned over, by the way, to the Justice Department for her investigation. That’s a major news story. You had — you had the NATO base in Turkey under attack by terrorists. You had a number of things that were appropriate to this campaign, were part of what Mr. Trump has been talking about. You had economic numbers coming out this week showing that productivity is down, housing ownership is down, unemployment, you know, is at the — at over 102 million. These are all things that could have been covered this week. Instead you took an aside that the Clinton narrative told you was something Mr. Trump told you he didn’t mean and played it out for two days. That’s what we’re talking about.”
Tapper retorted, “As a factual matter, on Monday my show covered Mr. Trump’s speech… And we did cover the Hillary Clinton e-mails. So these things, just because you say they’re not — they’re not true. We have been covering the substance.” But Manafort wasn’t having it. “Jake, we’ve been talking about these messages all week. You covered it one day, and you covered this aside about the Second Amendment for three days. Come on!” he exclaimed.
Tapper pressed forward. “Mr. Trump bears no responsibility for his campaign being off message?” he asked. “He is not — his comments about the Second Amendment had nothing to do with why we weren’t covering the economic message.” Manafort replied, of course, by referencing Clinton’s 2008 comments about Bobby Kennedy.
“His point about the Second Amendment was that people who cared about the Second Amendment should be concerned about Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. And that those who are concerned probably would take up the cause. Now you can interpret it, which I certainly didn’t, as a threat. But if you go back and look at threats, go back to 2008 when Hillary Clinton was running against Obama and in May of that year when she was clearly the loser and asked why are you still in the race she said, well, remember, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in 1968. I mean, that’s a much more direct reference laid at the feet of Hillary Clinton.”
(Via Real Clear Politics & Mediaite)