CNN’s most outspoken Trump supporter revealed in a new interview that he decided to back the president again in 2024 after he realized Trump might actually become president again.
“When 2024 came around and he was running for the nomination again, I was worried he wouldn’t be able to win because he didn’t win in 2020 and it was worrisome to me,” CNN’s Senior Political Commentator Scott Jennings said on Wednesday.
“I didn’t quite understand it until the campaign was really joined and I started to sense, OK, I can see how Republicans are lining up behind him and they want this vindication for what happened to him,” he added.
“It became very clear to me how the battle lines were being drawn as we were getting ready to do our 2024 coverage,” Jennings explained during a podcast interview with Mediaite’s Aidlan McLaughlin.
McLaughlin asked him about critics who allege that he and other Republicans who have had a change of heart on Trump—including J.D. Vance—were motivated more by political expediency than a genuine transformation.
“What do you say to people who don’t buy that it is a genuine conversion?” McLaughlin asked.
“I sort of reject the idea that just because you have a disagreement or a dissatisfaction with a politician on one day, that means you can’t strongly support them the next day,” Jennings said in his response. “Has he done things in the past or said things that maybe I didn’t like or was dissatisfied with or would have had a strategic quibble with? Sure.”
Jennings’ gripes with Trump in the interim years between his two administrations, especially concerning January 6, often seemed like more than “strategic quibbles.” He also referred to the president in a 2016 column as an “authoritarian.”
McLaughlin played a collection of videos, which originally aired on The Daily Show, showing Jennings excoriating Trump for his role in the Capitol riots and rejecting the idea of him being the 2024 nominee.
“He’s clearly violated his oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend and serve the Constitution,” Jennings said on CNN shortly after January 6.
“This is outrageous. It’s beyond the pale. Every Republican ought to say so,” Jennings added in 2022 after Trump said that Senator Mitch McConnell—for whom Jennings is a longtime advisor—had a “death wish” for backing a bipartisan bill to keep the government funded.
“It sounds like an unhinged, deranged person has gotten loose and is out on the street and may be a danger to themselves and others,” the pundit said at the time.
In 2022, Jennings declared, “We need a new nominee. If we nominate him again, we will lose.”
And he also referred to Trump as “the Florida man… who sits with nothing much to do in his golf club except watch television.”
Now, Jennings has flipped his tone. He told McLaughlin on Wednesday that President Trump is doing more “than just handling the day-to-day issues,” adding, “I truly believe we’re in a fight for Western civilization.”
On Tuesday, Jennings interviewed the president on his new radio show, where Trump sounded raspy and hoarse amid persistent questions about his health.
🚨🚨 Just got off the phone with PRESIDENT TRUMP.We covered several topics but top of his mind this morning: THE TARIFF RULING. Here’s a clip … and you can hear more today on THE SCOTT JENNINGS RADIO SHOW 2-3PM eastern on SALEM and streaming on X pic.twitter.com/7qQwINFwO7
— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) September 2, 2025
Jennings, however, thought that the president was “in rare form.”
Prior to his media career, Jennings ran his own super PAC and PR firm and served in the Bush administration, where he was ordered to testify in front of Congress about the purge of several U.S. attorneys who were seen as insufficiently loyal to the administration.
In November, he will release his first book, titled A Revolution of Common Sense: How Donald Trump Stormed Washington and Fought for Western Civilization. The book will feature a blurb from President Trump himself, who wrote that “Scott totally gets it.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
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