CNN host Jake Tapper claimed on Friday that “too many Republican leaders ” are “enthralled to Donald Trump,” causing them to be “eager to repeat the mistakes that have been made in the last six months.”

Tapper said this after playing a video in which Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said, “This is Donald Trump’s party, and I’m a Donald Trump Republican! We’re not going back to it the days of the Bushes and the McCains and the Romneys. Our way, America first, is the way forward for America.”

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“The choice couldn’t be more stark which one is under federal investigation, but I guess that’s a separate matter,” Tapper stated. “Look, the party is in a really weird place right now, a bad place. I am of the opinion that the United States of America needs a strong, thriving conservative party.”

“Hopefully, the Republican Party, a party that represents the views and opinions of millions of Americans who believe in what the Republican Party believes, traditionally,” he added. “But what we have now is too many Republican leaders enthrall to Donald Trump and in fear of the voters that Donald Trump has a great deal of sway with and not enough Republican leaders standing up for conservative principles. And it is a very ugly fight.”

“You know, after McCarthy, Joe McCarthy was censured in 1954, there was an eagerness of the Republican Party to move on. After Richard Nixon resigned in 1974, there was an eagerness of the Republican party to move on. We don’t have that now. We don’t have a Republican Party eager to move on,” Tapper continued. “We have a Republican Party eager to repeat the mistakes that have been made in the last six months.”

This comes after Tapper claimed that former President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed does not erase his “derelictions of duty” on his response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“You know we hear a lot from MAGA folks about why the Biden administration seems so reluctant to credit Trump for the vaccines,” he added. “And look, I get it. They could certainly be more gracious about it. Maybe it is politics.”

“Or maybe it’s that Trump screwed up so many other aspects of the response to the pandemic they could not get past the clear derelictions of duty, the refusal to acknowledge what was happening, the undermining of science and scientists, the mocking of those who wore masks, the attacks on Democratic governors for trying to take safety precautions, the promotion of quackery mishandlings that had real tangible impact,” Tapper continued.