A former Republican strategist offered an on-air defense of President-elect Donald Trump’s FBI chief nominee amid criticism over his praise of far-right conspiracy theories—but his fellow panelists were having none of it.
On Thursday night, CNN Newsnight host Abby Phillips played a sequence of clips in which Kash Patel was heard praising both adherents to and the central figure of the QAnon, which posits the existence of a satanic, pedophilic cabal pulling the strings of power in Washington, DC.
“Whether it’s the Qs of the world, who I agree with some of what he does—and I disagree with some of what he does—if it allows people to gather and focus on the truth and the facts, I’m all for it,” Patel said in the montage. “You got to harness that following that Q has garnered and just sort of tweak it a little bit. That’s all I’m saying.”
Scott Jennings, an informal adviser to Sen. Mitch McConnell, swiftly cited “literally an on-the-record denial of connections, right, from the Trump transition between Patel and this.”
Panelists Mondaire Jones, a Democratic lawyer, shot back: “But we just saw footage of it?”
His comments were followed by Philips’, who said, “I don’t know about connections to QAnon, because it’s not really a real thing, but he’s talked favorably about it.”
Earlier in the broadcast, Jennings attempted to defend Trump’s choice of Patel to head up the FBI as a figure who would restore some of the public trust that’s been lost in the domestic intelligence agency over the past decade.
“10 years ago, the FBI had a 59 percent approval rating. Today, it’s like 41 percent. There’s a lot of restoration work that needs to be done to restore public confidence in this agency,” he said. “It probably does need a change agent, an outside change agent, and the Republicans right now, they like this nomination. There’s a long way to go, but they like it right now.”
Phillips had a quick rejoinder for that too, telling Jennings: “This is kind of like how, you know, you tell everybody that elections are rigged and then when confidence in elections go down, we’re like, ‘Everybody, we need to change elections.’”
Jennings replied, “Are you saying the FBI hasn’t made any mistakes?”
Philips answered, “I’m just saying, when you spend years and years telling everybody the FBI is corrupt, they’re going to believe you.”
