Politics

CNN’s Brianna Keilar Fires Back At Nikki Haley For Accusing Media Of Trying ‘To Stoke’ GOP Divide

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Brandon Gillespie Media Reporter
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CNN host Brianna Keilar fired back Thursday at former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley after she accused the media of trying “to stoke a nonstop Republican civil war.”

In her broadcast of “CNN Newsroom,” Keilar addressed Haley’s Wednesday op-ed in The Wall Street Journal and accused her of spinning the division in the Republican Party as a concoction of the media. (RELATED: Nikki Haley Slams Biden’s Foreign Policy: ‘He’s More Interested In Reversing Everything President Trump Did’)

“The former ambassador to the U.N in the Trump administration, and former Governor of South Carolina, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, and she claims that it’s really the media that is responsible for the Grand Canyon sized divide bisecting the GOP,” Keilar began.

Keilar then read an excerpt from Haley’s op-ed, in which she said “the liberal media wants to stoke a nonstop Republican civil war” and “the media playbook starts with the demand that everyone pick sides about Donald Trump.” Haley added that “it’s a calculated strategy to pit conservatives against one another.”

“So that is her claim, as if Republicans require assistance in picking sides when it comes to Trump,” Keilar said, before playing multiple video clips of various Republican members of Congress saying either positive or negative things about former President Donald Trump.

“Haley says the media wants to stoke Republican civil war. Stoke it how? By telling Americans that it’s happening? What Republicans on either side of this divide are saying? Perhaps there would be no civil war if the media would just stop documenting it?” Keilar added after playing the clips.

“There is a civil war. The GOP is eating its own, casting out good people as it kowtows to conspiracy theorists,” she continued. “And the media ignoring that it’s happening won’t make Mitt Romney and Josh Hawley somehow agree on the existential questions facing their party. Nikki Haley is trying to have it both ways.”

Keilar went on to criticize Haley saying she “changed her tune” in the op-ed by praising Trump’s record as president while condemning his actions after the November election, which differed from an interview she did on Fox News in January where she called on Trump’s critics to “move on” from “beating him up” and “give him a break.”