‘Beyond the pale’: Scott Jennings shreds CNN panelist for calling Epstein fallout ‘delicious’ blow to Trump

Republican strategist Scott Jennings criticized The Atlantic contributing writer Jemele Hill on Thursday for expressing pleasure about backlash against President Donald Trump in connection to Jeffrey Epstein while neglecting the deceased pedophile’s victims.

Trump referred to the fallout as the “Epstein SCAM” in a Thursday Truth Social post, accusing Democrats of using it “to distract” from his administration’s positive momentum. After “CNN NewsNight” host Abby Phillip read part of Trump’s post on-air, Hill immediately described the situation as “delicious” and said she felt “very satisfied” by it, prompting Jennings to accuse her of callousness.

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“This is just a delicious own goal for so many reasons. Listen, he was the one — him and the Republican Party — they were the one that kept feeding this insane conspiracy theory about who was in these files,” Hill said. “And it was all cute and well and all fun when they could theorize and feed them conspiracy theories about all the Democrats who are possibly on this list. And now that their base expects delivery, they expect something to come from this, now they‘re like, ‘Wait a minute, there was nothing there. This is all—’ Nobody’s going to buy it.”

“[O]n either side of the aisle, if they really had the goods on the other side, I think we probably would have known that by now. But the fact is, because of how he used his conspiracy theory to further solidify himself with his base, they’re not going to buy whatever he says,” she added. “So now he’s got to produce some kind of smoking gun. And if there isn’t one, nobody’s going to believe it. So I’m just very satisfied by seeing him make such a huge unforced error.”

Jennings fired back, accusing Hill and others “on the left” of treating the Epstein issue as a political weapon against Trump rather than a “tragic” matter of justice.

“I have to say, your use of the word ‘delicious’ to start your comments — and then you’re saying that you’re ‘very satisfied’ — but, you know, we are talking about a situation here where young women were abused,” Jennings said. “This is a tragic case. [Ghislaine] Maxwell’s in jail because she helped traffic the women. This is a very, very tragic case.”

“I see Democrats and people on the left taking great political delight in this because they don’t care one bit about the victims. They only started caring about this about five minutes ago,” he continued. “They only started caring five minutes ago when it was a cudgel against Trump. So this kind of language where we just sort of laugh about the situation but forget the underlying issue, the victims here, to me, it’s beyond the pale.”

Hill repeatedly countered that conservatives “did the same thing” as Democrats are doing now.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries acknowledged on Monday that Democrats’ new effort to obtain more documents pertaining to Epstein is not based on them perceiving the issue as important.

NewsNation host Chris Cuomo accused Democrats on Monday of weaponizing Epstein documents purely to damage Trump rather than seek justice for victims.

“If they cared, why didn’t they ever do anything about it during the Biden administration? As hollow as I find the intrigue surrounding a mythical client list, or these magical notions that Epstein was murdered, at least the MAGA folk are asking for transparency in the name of discovering if more people need to be held responsible for trafficking and sexually abusing children,” Cuomo said. “Democrats aren’t asking for that. They’re clearly only interested in causing Trump agita.”