CNN’s Jake Tapper said on the Tuesday broadcast of his show “The Lead With Jake Tapper” that President Donald Trump has “played footsie” with extremist groups that “sure do love him.”
Tapper was joined by former Republican Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers and they discussed the role that Trump and Republicans played in the incitement of the riot that took place at the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday.
“Don’t House Republicans and Senate Republicans and MAGA media, people who lied to Trump supporters, don’t they need to own up to what they did?” asked Tapper. “Because that’s part of the problem.” (RELATED: ‘Clear Acts Of Sedition And Violence And Terrorism’: Jake Tapper Blasts Trump Statement During Riots)
Rogers said that he thought they should take responsibility, referring to the people who joined Trump in alleging that massive voter fraud swung the election towards President-elect Joe Biden. He then stated that they needed to admit, “listen, we lost. The President of the United States lost,” before expressing how Republicans could start to move into the future.
“They didn’t want to do that. They didn’t want to have hard conversations,” Rogers continued. “Yes, I get it, there are some extremist groups out there who are preaching violence, and again those aren’t Republicans. These are folks who are extremists, they’re anarchists, they’re white nationalists. Those are the groups we should stay as far away from, all of us as a country. That’s one thing we should unite around.”
Rogers went on to claim that the people who are part of those extremist groups were “not welcome in our political structure.”
“They may not be Republicans, but they sure do love Donald Trump and he sure has played footsie with them for years now,” Tapper concluded.