On Saturday evening, Americans got a small glimpse into the distorted mind of the mainstream news media and found out exactly what the anchors and punditry of CNN, in particular, think of them. Frustrated and grasping at straws in their orchestrated attempt with Democrats to remove Donald Trump from office, host Don Lemon and pundit guests turned to mocking and verbally abusing the president’s supporters.
During CNN’s live coverage of the impeachment circus on Saturday night, New York Times columnist Wajahat Ali and alleged GOP strategist Rick Wilson joined the vacuous Lemon to discuss a spat between NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in which Pompeo suggested that Kelly couldn’t find Ukraine on a map.
Wilson, who has authored several anti-Trump books, including Running Against the Devil and Everything Trump Touches Dies — A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever started off the bigotry when discussing the Pompeo/NPR fracas.
“[Pompeo] also knows deep in his heart that Donald Trump couldn’t find Ukraine on a map if you had the letter U and a picture of an actual, physical crane next to it,” Wilson remarked. This started Lemon giggling, which quickly turned into hard laughter. “He knows that this is, you know, an administration defined by ignorance of the world. And so, that’s partly him playing to their base and playing to their audience. You know, the credulous boomer rube demo that backs Donald Trump,” Wilson continued.
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It was at this point that Wilson switched into some sort of hillbilly accent and attacked Trump’s supporters more directly: “Donald Trump’s the smart one, and y’all elitists are dumb!”
Ali joined in the fun, stating, “You elitists with your geography and your maps — and your spelling!”
Wilson added, “Your math and your reading. All those lines on the map!”
Through it all, Lemon — who has been a leading voice against what he calls “toxicity” in public discourse — laughed like a child, at one point doubling over and wiping tears from his eyes.
“That was a good one,” Lemon said when he finally gained control of himself. “I needed that.” (video below; relevant clip starts at 3:10)
Ironically, the clip didn’t go viral until Monday, when former CNN Digital Producer Steve Krakauer tweeted it and remarked, “The arrogance, the dismissiveness, the smug cackling, the accents. If Donald Trump wins reelection this year, I’ll remember this brief CNN segment one Saturday night in January as the perfect encapsulation for why it happened.”
President Trump, in his inimitable style, tweeted one possible reason why it took so long for Lemon’s tomfoolery to resonate: “Don Lemon, the dumbest man on television (with terrible ratings!)”
Conservative commentator Stephen Miller hit the nail on the head: “The most telling thing about the Don Lemon comment is no one commented on it when it aired. No one watched it.”
On Tuesday, Lemon attempted to explain himself. He wasn’t laughing at the president’s supporters, you see. He was just laughing at a joke belittling the president’s supporters.
“Ask anyone who knows me,” Lemon said at the end of his show. “They’ll tell you: I don’t believe in belittling people … for who they are, for what they believe or where they’re from.”
Claiming he “didn’t catch everything that was said,” Lemon said he was “laughing at the joke and not at any group of people.”
Why don’t I believe you, Don?
The incident shouldn’t surprise anyone. The contempt that CNN and all the other coastal-based networks hold for anyone in “flyover country” — Trump supporter or not — is palpable. They actually see themselves as “elites,” the smartest people in any room. They don’t understand that the term is pejorative. That haughtiness, that smug superiority is inherited from the days in which they were the main source for news.
Thankfully, that’s not the case anymore. The truly informed members of society do not watch CNN — only people in airports who cannot change the channel do.
Some have compared the incident to Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” remark of 2016, but it’s not that serious. Lemon and his guests aren’t thought leaders, after all. They’re just sock puppets for the Democrat thought leaders. This incident is just another small window into the decaying soul of a legacy news media who doesn’t understand (or care about) the public it professes to serve.
Image: screenshot from YouTube video
James Murphy is a freelance journalist who writes on a variety of subjects, with a primary focus on the ongoing anthropogenic climate-change hoax and cultural issues. He can be reached at [email protected].
