‘Do You Think I’m Poisoning White Blood?’ CNN’s Karen Finney Confronts Scott Jennings Over Trump Rhetoric

CNN analyst Karen Finney confronted Scott Jennings over President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric, which included language about “poisoning the blood” of the country.

Going into Election Day, the expectation was that it would be a close presidential race that could take days or longer to have a decision. But once polls began to close and the results poured in, it was only a matter of hours before outlets called the race for Trump.

A major subplot of the closing days of the campaign was the emergence of former senior Trump aides calling Trump a “fascist” and suggesting he admires Nazis — whom he was frequently accused of echoing during the race.

On Wednesday morning’s post-election special edition of CNN News Central, things got heated as Jennings complained about Vice President Kamala Harris agreeing with the “fascist” assessment, and Finney rebutted him by citing Trump’s rhetoric.

At one point Finney turned to Jennings and rhetorically asked “Scott Jennings, do you believe that I am poisoning white blood?”:

SCOTT JENNINGS: (VP Harris) just spent weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks conditioning your entire party and near half the country to believe that Trump is a fascist, that he’s going to be a dictator, that he’s going to rip up the Constitution, that he’s going to cause bloodbaths and on and on and on.

And now she has to wake up today and say, okay. And I’m now conceding power to the person that I strongly implied was going to be a modern Hitler. Do you believe that people she just conditioned with that kind of campaign are going to accept it?

BAKARI SELLERS: That’s not the way this works first. First of all.

SCOTT JENNINGS: Then then she didn’t actually believe it.

BAKARI SELLERS: First of all.

SCOTT JENNINGS: Did she actually believed it?

BAKARI SELLERS: First thought.

SCOTT JENNINGS: It was her word. She just used–.

(CROSSTALK)

BAKARI SELLERS: But one second. One second, Scott. I mean, I don’t want to relitigate campaign talking points. But when you’re talking about fascism, we’re actually talking about what his chief of staff said. When you’re talking about–

SCOTT JENNINGS: She said it.

BAKARI SELLERS: I know–.

SCOTT JENNINGS: She said it. My question. The only question I have is, did she believe it or not?

BAKARI SELLERS: Yes, because I still.

SCOTT JENNINGS: Okay, so she’s going then to concede to a fascist.

Speaker 3 Yes!

(CROSSTALK)

SCOTT JENNINGS: Glad we got it out in the open.

…

BAKARI SELLERS: Scott, like, look, I can believe Donald Trump.

SCOTT JENNINGS: Please continue down this path–.

BAKARI SELLERS: I guess I am for the next 30s. I believe Donald Trump is a fascist. I believe that democracy– maybe 10s. I believe that democracy is at risk. But I also believe that American voters came out and chose that and that that is that’s how this thing works.

SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON: But you know what? From the perspective of a lot of Republicans, they felt the country has been at risk under Joe Biden And Kamala Harris and Ron Brownstein talked about this.

You know, and Scott mentioned it in an earlier segment about people being afraid about the state of the country and democracy writ large. A lot of people on the right believe the same thing because they have seen after three and a half years of constant perpetual attacks against them, against their way of life, against what they believe allegedly about who they are as people, because people in D.C. and New York and on the left coast and a lot of progressives don’t understand them.

And so instead of attempting to make the effort to understand, you guys have called them racist and bigots, uneducated, who came to their guns and their Bibles, etc..

KAREN FINNEY: But at the same time, we spent four years of Donald Trump, of Democrats and progressives being the same, told to us about us.

And this president, as a Black woman said, I’m stupid, said we’re stupid! Ver- poisoning the blood of our people, which I have said before, that actually came from Jim Crow.

So if we’re going to go down that, you know, I mean, Scott Jennings, do you believe that I am poisoning white blood? I mean, come on!

Watch above via CNN News Central.