WATCH: CNN’s Abby Phillip Repeatedly Stuffs Her Own Republican Analyst Over Rick Scott’s Big Moment

Republican CNN analyst Scott Jennings was stymied at every turn by anchor Abby Phillip, who repeatedly pushed back at his attempts to control the damage Rick Scott has done as architect of the big SOTU heckling moment at President Joe Biden’s SOTU.

Scott has become the center of GOP ire as author of the proposal that Biden mentioned, which sparked the moment of the night at Tuesday’s State of the Union: when the president found himself flat-out arguing with Republicans screaming “LIAR!” in the middle of the speech. Since then, Scott has been making the rounds trying to distance himself from the idea of sunsetting popular programs every five years.

On Thursday afternoon’s edition of CNN Newsroom, anchor Phillip and a panel consisting of analysts Jennings and Democratic strategist Christy Setzer talked about Biden’s trip to Florida, but Jennings decided to go on offense by attacking Biden for bringing up Scott’s plan.

But Phillip was quick to correct him by pointing out that the president correctly qualified his claim that “some Republicans” were supportive of Scott’s plan. She and Setzer went on to take issue with Jennings for trying to paint Scott as a “gadfly,” and Phillip turned another of Jennings’ arguments around on him to suggest his outrage was hypocritical:

SCOTT JENNINGS: Rick Scott’s a gadfly in our party who his ideas were rejected by the voters in the last cycle. We learned that in Senate races. He was then rejected by the Senate Republican Conference. And now Joe Biden wants us all to believe that we’re following Rick Scott’s ideas.

…

ABBY PHILLIP: But Scott, don’t you think that Rick Scott has really walked into, if this was a trap laid by the White House, walked into that trap? He appeared on CNN this morning, doubling down on this issue. But Biden seems to be forcing Republicans to talk about something they don’t want to talk about.

SCOTT JENNINGS: Yeah, Rick Scott’s really smart. Just ask him. He’ll tell you all about it. I mean, the reality is Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, virtually every other Republican in Congress, they don’t want to do this plan. And what Biden was saying in the State of the Union was dishonest. We’re not doing a debt ceiling deal in exchange for this plan. That’s not on the table. It’s never been on the table. It is a straw man dishonest argument being made by Joe Biden. Every Republican is against this. There’s not going to be any entitlement cuts. The American people should bank on that. But Joe Biden running against Rick Scott and trying to bait Donald Trump into this tells you that he doesn’t want to take on honest Republicans. He wants to take on our gadflies. And that’s the only possible way he has back in the White House.

ABBY PHILLIP: So so every Republican is obviously not against this plan. Some Republicans are. It’s just not a majority. And Biden did say that in the State of the Union. But, Christie, I got to ask you, I mean, Biden is in Florida and it seems like the driving force for Republicans right now is on some of these culture war issues, whether you’re talking about trans kids or curriculum issues, critical race theory, whatnot, immigration. Do you expect Biden to address that at all today? Or will he stay focused on the pocketbook issues?

CHRISTY SETZER: …I really appreciate Scott’s attempt to to marginalize Rick Scott, to act as though he wasn’t the head of the Senatorial Campaign Committee, as though he wasn’t sort of putting out policy positions that he expected the rest of the Republican caucus to adopt. That’s really sweet and it’s really nice sort of in retrospect to try to take that position. But in fact, no, this is the position of the Republican Party that they have wanted to cut Social Security, Medicare. They have wanted to fight these culture wars and adopt these positions that very few mainstream Americans can possibly agree with. So it behooves Democrats to bring them out there. That said, I think that if I were the Biden campaign, what I would want to do is spend about 70% of my time focused on pocketbook, on pocketbook issues and maybe 30% of the time getting into taking the fight to them on culture wars.

SCOTT JENNINGS: I have to respond to that because she invoked me. Let me ask you a question. Does Joe Biden endorse defunding the police?

CHRISTY SETZER: He does not.

SCOTT JENNINGS: Okay. But there are.

ABBY PHILLIP: Well actually, Scott, that’s a really…

SCOTT JENNINGS: There are Democrats that do and there are Democrats that do. So Joe Biden wants to defund the police under your logic, that’s a true story.

ABBY PHILLIP: Scott. That’s actually a really good point because Republicans are crying foul for Biden, painting them with this broad brush. When Republicans in the last midterm cycle did the very same thing on defund the police. So I just wonder, I mean, as a political tactic, is it really as outrageous as you’re making it sound, considering that Republicans did the exact same thing on defund the police?

SCOTT JENNINGS: I mean, I find it to be outrageous because Joe Biden knows it’s not true. And yet, I mean, look, this is a tried and true Democrat tactic. It must be an election come in because they’re attacking Republicans on Medicare and Social Security. The difference here is, and Rick Scott has no leadership position in our party. I don’t know if you caught the news. He ran for Republican leader and got beat 37 to 10. This is a backbench gadfly idea. And the defund the police, as far as I can tell, was more mainstream in the Democratic Party. But Joe Biden, to his credit, did reject it in a State of the Union. So if you want to have a fair fight here about applying gadfly positions to our party’s leaders. At least be honest about it.

ABBY PHILLIP: Okay. Look, I don’t know that you could describe Rick Scott, who was the leader of the Senate Republican Congressional Committee, as a gadfly figure at all. But I want to move on to the budget.

Scott isn’t the only GOP senator with a plan to sunset entitlements. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin suggested sunsetting the plans even more frequently. RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel endorsed Scott’s entire plan, as did Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, Indiana Sen. Mike Braun, and Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz.

Watch above via CNN Newsroom.