Thursday on CNN’s “The Lead,” host Jake Tapper criticized President Donald Trump for his interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham at the Normandy American Cemetery.
Tapper said, “More than 9,380 men are buried at Normandy, which today was the site of the ceremony honoring those lost in the fight for freedom. Now you might think that such a day and such a setting would compel an American president, a president who himself gave a strong address to mark the occasion of the memorial, to resist from engaging in petty politics on this day and on those grounds. But you would be wrong. Here’s President Trump just yards away from the graves of American heroes asked by his favorite channel about special counsel Robert Mueller who is not incidentally a veteran of the Vietnam war, awarded a Bronze star for Valor.”
During a clip of the interview, Ingraham asked, “Do you mind if he testifies? Before you said you didn’t care if —”
Trump said, “Let me tell you. He made such a fool out of himself the last time because what people don’t report is the letter he had to do to straighten out his testimony because his testimony was wrong.”
Tapper continued, “It’s not exactly clear what Trump was talking about even since Mueller didn’t testify, but either way, the president also had some choice words in the same setting, just yards from the graves of heroes, for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.”
In another excerpt from the Fox News interview, Trump said, “I call her nervous Nancy, Nancy Pelosi doesn’t talk about it. Nancy Pelosi is a disaster, okay? She’s a disaster. And let her do what she wants. You know what? I think they’re in big trouble.”
Tapper said, “It’s really not that difficult to imagine what the response might be by both the president’s party and his protectors on The Hill and in the media if a Democrat–a Democratic president–had engaged in political attacks like that one on the D-Day anniversary on the grounds of the cemetery. Now to be fair to President Trump, he did deliver at Normandy remarks that some observers have said were among the best of his presidency.”
He concluded, “The question, of course, is whether the president undermined any of those sentiments by minutes later seeming to not fully comprehend the sacred ground on which he stood.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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