CNN’s Navarro doesn’t back off Trump ‘dementia’ tweet: ‘I did not say he had’ it

Two CNN political commentators got into a heated exchange on Wednesday after anti-Trump pundit Ana Navarro was accused by conservative radio host Ben Ferguson of saying President Trump has dementia.

“I think people that criticize the president and they constantly say, well, he’s unpresidential or he’s unhinged or he is outside the realm,” said Ferguson. “The same people that are saying that are the ones that are tweeting things like I think the president has dementia or I think it’s time to unseat the president or I think it’s time to impeach him. If you don’t like the president, it doesn’t mean that you have to go to personal attacks or to somehow say that his mind is not sane.”

“Let me say this. I did not say he had dementia,” injected Navarro.

“You implied it,” Ferguson shot back.

“No, no, no. Go read my tweet. It’s right there,” said Navarro.

The tweet in question went out to Navarro’s 572,000 followers during Trump’s rally in Phoenix last night where he repeatedly attacked the media for not reporting on his Charlottesville condemnation accurately.

“Only possible defensible explanation for Trump’s disgusting, unpresidential, narcissistic behavior, would be early-on-set dementia. Maybe,” Navarro wrote in a tweet that was retweeted more than 7,500 times and liked nearly 30,000 times. 

Only possible defensible explanation for Trump’s disgusting, unpresidential, narcissistic behavior, would be early-on-set dementia. Maybe.

— Ana Navarro (@ananavarro) August 23, 2017

{mosads}”What I said was that the only defensible excuse, the only defensible explanation is if he is not mentally well because if he is, then he is just such an incredible, self-centered, narcissistic, unfit jerk that it makes it that much worse,” said Navarro. 

“This is what I’m talking about,” replied Ferguson, in a reference to his earlier comments.

“The only thing that would make it defensible is if he really is not well. If sometime later in the future we find out he has something. I’m not saying he has it,” Navarro added.

“Of course you are,” Ferguson said.

Navarro has been one of CNN’s staunchest critics of the president. The 45-year-old Republican strategist supported former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in the GOP primaries for the 2016 presidential election.