‘You Keep Fighting These Old Battles’: Scott Jennings Clashes With CNN Panel Over Trump Tariffs, Border Security

Republican strategist Scott Jennings clashed with a CNN panel Tuesday night over President-elect Donald Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico over border security and fentanyl.

Trump announced plans to impose a 25% tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada in a Tuesday post on Truth Social, insisting that the two countries need to do more to halt the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs across their borders into the United States. Jennings said the threat of the tariffs was necessary to get the attention of Mexican and Canadian leaders. (RELATED: ‘The Panic Is So Outrageous’: Scott Jennings Takes On CNN Panelists Petrified By Thought Of Musk Buying MSNBC)

“Obviously it sparked the conversation, which they do need to have. They don’t have a lot of fentanyl that comes across the border, but there are some people that come across the border,” Jennings said about Canada. “I feel like what Mexico needs to do, they need to stop the people and they need to stop the drugs. It’s coming right over the southern border.”

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“They’re a terrible neighbor. They have been a terrible neighbor and Donald Trump needs to get their attention and I think he has done that,” Jennings continued. “I agree with you, this is the beginning of a negotiation. But it’s more than just the economy. It’s national security. And it’s this poison that is killing American people all over this country.”

Rampell argued that a previous bipartisan bill negotiated by Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona would have addressed border security and fentanyl. Trump and House Republicans opposed the deal, saying it didn’t do enough to secure the border.

“You know that there actually was bipartisan legislation intended to increase our fentanyl detection technologies at the border and Trump killed it?” Rampell claimed. “That was the bipartisan border bill that Trump basically unilaterally killed.”

The Senate failed to invoke cloture on a motion to begin debate on the border security bill, which was packaged with foreign aid, by a vote of 50-49 on Feb. 7.

“You keep fighting these old battles. Donald Trump won and he wants and he wants the border secured,” Jennings told Rampell, who kept insisting that the failed bipartisan bill was “the solution.”

“It‘s not the only solution, because Mexico has to do something,” Jennings told Rampell. “It’s a crisis [and] they do nothing.”

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