CNN’s Phillip on 1/6 Hearing: ‘Elephant in the Room’ Is Trump’s Mental Capacity

CNN anchor Abby Phillip said Monday on her network’s coverage of the House Select Committee hearing on the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol that the “elephant in the room” was former President Donald Trump’s mental capacity.

Anchor Dana Bash said, “Absolute vivid descriptions painting a picture of just what you described, of a president of the United States, one after another rejecting the sound advise, data-based advice he was getting from his campaign manager, from the attorney general of the United States, from the legal team that he ended up firing. All of that advice, he rejected, and he instead chose, this is the way they described it, a drunk Giuliani and the people in his orbit.”

Phillip said, “At some point, it’s a question of does that matter? When everybody around you is telling you that it’s not true, does it really matter? Perhaps that’s a question for the lawyers. But there’s another element to several of the pieces of testimony. Bill Barr and other people around him, Bill Stepien saying it got much more difficult to convince the president of anything rational. They’re raising the question that we heard from Adam Kinzinger, one of the Republicans on this committee over the weekend, who basically said if Trump, in fact, does believe all of these lies and conspiracy theories, now we also have questions about his capacity, his mental capacity in that role. I think that’s actually the elephant in the room of a lot of this testimony. Bill Barr basically saying you can’t rationalize with this guy.”

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