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CNN Interview With Trump Adviser Derails: 'You're Just Saying A Bunch Of Crap'

CNN's Brianna Keilar repeatedly fact checked Mercedes Schlapp's apparent attempts to villainize mail-in voting.

A combative exchange about mail-in voting reached a boiling point Tuesday when CNN host Brianna Keilar accused Trump campaign senior adviser Mercedes Schlapp of “just saying a bunch of crap” after repeatedly fact-checking her voter fraud claims.

Schlapp joined Keilar’s program to discuss US President Donald Trump’s sudden about-face on mail-in voting, but just in Florida. Earlier Tuesday, he encouraged voting by mail there, claiming it is “safe and secure,” after spending months baselessly vilifying mail-in ballots in general as vulnerable to widespread fraud.

When Keilar asked Schlapp to explain Trump’s reversal on Florida and asked whether it applied to other states, Schlapp began a multifaceted attack on universal mail-in voting.

She asserted that it will be legal in Nevada to cast a vote days after Election Day and, among other claims of voter fraud and ballot harvesting, called out issues in the New York primaries. (As Keilar noted, the issues in New York had “nothing to do with fraud.” They were caused by a delay in counting the deluge of ballots prompted by the coronavirus pandemic). And in Nevada, a recently approved plan to expand mail-in voting to all voters will allow ballots to be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day but arrive up to a week later. People cannot vote after the election.

Diving into the findings of multiple studies, Keilar advised viewers that there is no evidence that mail-in voting leads to fraudulent activity and that any cases identified have been statistically insignificant.

The clashes continued as Schlapp made additional arguments against mail-in voting, prompting Keilar to ask: “Why are you doing that? Because it appears that it’s just to sow doubt in the minds of people about whether their votes are going to matter.”

“Mercedes, this is just pointless,” she eventually conceded. “I get it. You’re just saying a bunch of crap. OK, you’re saying a bunch of crap.”

Watch the full exchange below.

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