Donald Trump keeps tabs on him. So does Elon Musk. And GOP-friendly media regularly circulates videos of him roasting his Democratic counterparts and the woke mob on live television.
Meanwhile, Democrats and liberal activists find him insufferable. They are appalled CNN allows him to open his mouth over their airwaves.
Like or loathe him, Scott Jennings has become one of the most prominent Republican stars in the mainstream media.
“I have no trouble at all helping people understand how the average middle America Republican might see an issue on any given day,” Mr. Jennings told The Washington Times. “That’s how I see my job — to give my sort of authentic, honest opinion and analysis about any issue, and from the perspective just, you know, of what’s the average Republican thinking?”
The 47-year-old’s trajectory traces back to a high school internship in Louisville, where he got to read the news live while working as a disc jockey for a country music station.
From there, this son of a Democratic garbage man was accepted on a full scholarship — named after Sen. Mitch McConnell, the lion of Kentucky politics — at the University of Louisville, where he interned at a local radio station.
Toward the end of college, Mr. McConnell called him and urged him to get off the sidelines and into the political game, and he joined George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign in Kentucky and did some work in West Virginia as well.
He was Karl Rove’s deputy in the White House.
He has since worked on each of Mr. McConnell’s campaigns and still talks to him regularly. He also served as an adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign.
He has rolled those skills into his current gig, which he has had since 2017 and boils down to explaining to CNN viewers and those who catch clips on social media what it means to be a Republican in the Trump-dominated GOP.
Mr. Jennings, who regularly contacted senior officials with the Trump campaign, said he sees a through-line in his experience in the GOP.
“Sure, the party, I think, is evolved, and certainly the direction of the party, both in terms of policy and attitude, has changed a little bit under Trump, but I still feel like the Republican Party is the party of freedom, and you know, the party that stands up for the future of Western civilization, which is how I felt when I worked for Bush, and how I feel right now,” Mr. Jennings told The Times. “I don’t have any trouble being Republican, to be honest with you.”
“I think in my job, half or well over half of the country needs somebody to stand up for them and to help explain the world the way we see it.”
Kevin Madden, a GOP strategist who worked with Mr. Jennings on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, said he doesn’t think Mr. Jenniongs “set out to become a spokesman or a symbol for a Trump-inspired Republican Party.”
“If you look at his background, or even just ask him, he’s a product of a very straightforward view of the party that once represented limited government and traditional conservative planks towards the economy, national security and culture,” Mr. Madden said. “But the reason he’s emerged as such a prominent figure is because of the sheer volume of the daily, almost hourly, battles he faces on-air against this axis of left-leaning, out-of-touch political commentary.”
“He’s become a sort of avatar for how a sensible Kentucky worldview competes against the Acela corridor worldview,” he said. “The fact that he’s constantly outnumbered makes each of his rhetorical wins that much more impactful.”
Indeed, Mr. Jennings is often outgunned, surrounded by more liberal-leaning commentators on CNN panels.
Mr. Jennings says he is energized by the rhetorical combat and opportunity to stand up for a massive chunk of the electorate in intellectual exchanges with “incredibly smart people” such as David Axelrod, a former senior Obama strategist.
His headfirst approach turned into television gold: confrontation and political fireworks.
Mr. Jennings recently went viral after he praised WNBA star Caitlan Clark and her impact on women’s basketball while warning that apologizing for her “white privilege” will never be enough for the “woke mob” that hates her guts.
“Whether you’re an athlete or, you know, anyone else, if I hear you use the phrase ’my truth,’ I immediately then discount everything else you say because there isn’t ’my truth’ or ’your truth,’ there’s just the truth,” Mr. Jennings said on “CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip,” which averaged less than 370,000 viewers in December. “And that tells me that your brain has been captured by something that I don’t really respect.”
The comment drew stiff blowback from the liberal voices on the panel. It also sparked a fiery debate across the internet, with liberals saying Ms. Clark’s apology undercut the conservative argument that white privilege does not exist.
Trump backers, meanwhile, said Amen and blasted the clip out around social media.
Mr. Musk shared it, and it has since been viewed over 31 million times, putting another feather in his cap.
Mr. Jennings credited CNN with providing him the chance to counter the “Never Trump” Republicans who will talk about how “horrible” it is for someone to continue to fly the GOP flag.
“When you look at some of the things that I do on CNN, I’m trying to defeat narratives in favor of what I believe to be true, and that, to me, makes the best pundit,” he said. “Are you engaging in narratives or wish casting? Or are you engaging in things that are actually happening?”
