CNN’s Scott Jennings Makes Bold Jan. 6 Riot Claim on Kaitlan Collins Show

CNN conservative commentator Scott Jennings has become a vocal defender of Donald Trump in recent years, but even he disagrees with the President’s views on the January 6 Capitol riots.

On Tuesday’s (January 6) edition of CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, Jennings was asked about the White House’s new January 6 website page, which reframes the attack on the Capitol building as a protest by “patriotic Americans” who were “unfairly targeted.”

Collins drew Jennings’ attention specifically to a quote on the website about the Capitol Police, which reads, “Capitol Police aggressively fire tear gas, flash bangs, and rubber munitions into crowds of peaceful protesters, injuring many and deliberately escalating tensions.”

“That’s blaming the cops for what happened that day, is it not, Scott?” Collins asked, per Mediaite.

“Yeah, I mean, that’s how you could read it,” Jennings replied before admitting he has a “somewhat different” point of view on what happened that day than the President. However, he also noted he doesn’t “treat it like a national holiday like the Democrats do.”

“It was a bad day, but I don’t look forward to memorializing it every year,” he continued. “It was a bad day, it should never happen again, the President has a point of view on it, he’s got a messaging point of view on it that he’s never backed away from, and the American people frankly adjudicated these questions in the 2024 election, and he’s the sitting President.”

Jennings previously referred to the January 6 attacks on the Capitol as an “insurrection” and an act of “terrorism” in an op-ed he wrote for CNN on January 6, 2021.

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“This is literally an insurrection,” wrote Jennings at the time, noting that “every Republican” should condemn it. “The fact that the US military hasn’t secured the seat of our government already is a failure of leadership by the commander in chief.”

He continued, “President Donald Trump caused this insurrection with his lies and conspiracy theories about the election process being rigged against him. It was not stolen, but this madness was fomented by the President and his top advisers over the past several months.”

Jennings went on to write that he was “ashamed and embarrassed” for his country and “any Republican who fails to condemn this shameful behavior.”

The MAGA pundit has tempered his feelings towards Trump in recent years, often supporting the President’s viewpoints on CNN’s NewsNight with Abby Phillip, where he’s a regular panelist. He even wrote a book about Trump’s return to the White House, which Trump promoted on social media last month.