CNN Panel Goes Off on Kushner’s ‘Astonishing’ Russia-FBI Comments: Very ‘Ill-Prepared’ for ‘Obvious’ Questions

Jake Tapper and his panel this afternoon went off on Jared Kushner for an answer he gave during a big interview with Axios’ Jonathan Swan.

After pressing Kushner on the Trump Tower meeting, Swan asked him if if would call the FBI if some similar outreach happened again. Kushner responded, “I don’t know. It’s hard to do hypotheticals, but the reality is we were not given anything that was salacious.”

Tapper said, “The fact that the president’s son-in-law was not able to say that he would alert the FBI if he received similar outreach from the Russians is pretty remarkable.”

The Guardian columnist Richard Wolffe called it “astonishing” and said, “Clearly this White House is not prepared for the next time. And it’s no wonder that Jared Kushner couldn’t get a security clearance without the help of his father-in-law when he makes statements like this.”

Tapper brought up previous comments by Trump and Rudy Giuliani––particularly Giuliani’s argument that there’s nothing wrong with taking information from the Russians––to say they don’t seem to have “learned the lesson” from 2016.

CNN senior political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson said that Kushner “just seemed ill-prepared for this interview,” a sentiment that apparently resonated in the White House. Per CNN White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins:

“This interview in particular caught the eye of a lot of people inside the West Wing today, Jake, who were asking me about how he seemed ill-prepared to answer these questions that seemed like pretty obvious questions he was going to get, especially about the Saudi crown prince, and they were kind of surprised why he did this interview.”

You can watch above, via CNN.

[image via screengrab]