CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins appeared to lose patience with Republican lawmakers pointing fingers at former Democratic presidents, even as President Donald Trump drowns under an avalanche of bad polls and unpopular White House policies.
“You can point whatever fingers you want, but [voters] concerned about the things that Republicans are doing well, securing the border of the United States, getting tax rates low, reducing mandatory spending, doing a lot of the things they wanted us to do, and making our military stronger and so forth,” said Rep. Chip Roy, [R-Texas].
“But if you’re a voter and you’re saying, ‘well, look, we’ve seen two years of Republicans in control of everything in Washington, and right now it’s still costing me more at the grocery store and at the gas pump. Why should they elect Republicans on Tuesday?” Collins asked.
“Look, we’ve been doing the job they elected us to do,” Roy said, “but we haven’t finished the job. My argument is very simple. Like, we know that the American people are hurting. I got to go fill up my gas tank. I get it, but you got to ask yourself, is it worth it to cut the head of the snake off with Iran in order to try to prevent the continuing use of proxy terrorists to disrupt the global oil supply and to disrupt, you know, our safety and security around the globe.”
Roy went on to complain that he didn’t “want to talk about, [Trump’s] new helipad,” and he blamed “both Democrats and Republicans for failing to stop spending recklessly. So interest rates are high.”
Roy did not mention, however, that he voted for Trump’s Big Beautiful Act, which added more than $3 trillion in new debt by extending the Trump tax cuts and imposing new expenditures. Roy also refused to rein in Trump’s expensive war in Iran, which has contributed its own percentage to the debt and is blamed as an inflation driver.
But when Collins pointed out that Trump has been promising to finish the war with Iran quickly “for seven months,” Roy countered that war is “not easy.”
“I mean, let’s talk about Obama, who’s trying to poke at the president. Obama put troops in Syria. Obama had people in his surges in Afghanistan,” Roy began, but Collins interrupted, saying: “Yeah, well, Obama is not president right now. President Trump is the president right now.”
To this, Roy replied: “we know there’s a cost to that. … So, we’re working on that.”
This was not good enough for Collins, however.
“Trump said that two years ago,” she countered. “This is something actually, someone in Alabama said to me recently about [Trump] promising to bring down prices, bringing down inflation, bringing down gas, getting it to $2, ending foreign wars. That is what President Trump said on the campaign trail in 2024. So why should voters trust Republicans when they’ve been in power, saying that exactly in 2026?”
“My argument would be is that it takes time, and we’ve only been in 21 months, and we’ve got to be able to finish the job,” said Roy.
“Well, you keep saying you need to finish the job. That was president Biden’s line. It didn’t work,” Collins pointed out.