Scott Jennings, CNN’s most prominent pro-Trump commentator, was triggered into swearing at a fellow panelist on live television on Thursday night after being repeatedly pressed to name a single political concession the US had extracted from its war with Iran – and failing to answer.
The outburst came during NewsNight With Abby Phillip, where Jennings clashed with Adam Mockler, a 23-year-old commentator with the progressive MeidasTouch. When Mockler asked him to name a concrete gain from the conflict, Jennings responded with the party-line response that the conflict had a singular, clear purpose – preventing a theocratic regime from acquiring nuclear weapons – but Mockler shot back that the non-answer was itself an answer.
“So you can’t answer the question,” Mockler replied. Moments later, as Mockler kept gesturing with his hands while speaking, Jennings, a former George W Bush campaign staffer, snapped: “Get your fucking hand out of my face.”
Jennings has a history of lashing out at panelists who get in his personal space, including a tense moment from 2024 with Democratic commentator Bakari Sellers.
Jennings’ most recent outburst may be a reflection of the times. A new Washington Post–ABC News-Ipsos poll from Friday found 61% of Americans now consider the use of military force against Iran a mistake – a level of opposition the pollsters compared to the Iraq war in 2006, when violence was at its peak, and to the Vietnam war in the early 1970s.
Fewer than one in five Americans believe the campaign has been going well, with roughly four in 10 saying it has not been successful and a further four in 10 saying it is too early to render a verdict.
The results mirrored a similar CNN poll conducted in the very first days of the war.
The argument that Jennings made on air before his meltdown has remained the go-to Republican position that has been the cause of their headaches: that it is Democratic opposition that was manufacturing the war’s unpopularity rather than reflecting it.
The Pentagon secretary, Pete Hegseth, when testifying before the Senate on Thursday, offered a similar line.
“We are two months into a historic military success in Iran,” Hegseth told Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, “and it’s defeatist Democrats like you that cloud the mind of the American people that would otherwise fully support preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon.”
Jennings did not respond to a request for comment on whether he would explain the outburst or apologize to Mockler.
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