In the wake of last week’s racially motivated shooting of two black people killed in a Kentucky supermarket by a white man, CNN anchor Don Lemon appeared on Cuomo Prime Time to discuss the culture surrounding the recent spate of violence carried out by right-wing conspiracists and white supremacists.
Noting the ideology behind the perpetrators, Lemon said that the “biggest terror threat” facing America is “white men” — not people who, for example, are marching in the migrant caravan (as President Trump and some of his supporters have suggested).
“But we keep thinking that the biggest terror threat is something else—some people who are marching toward the border like its imminent, and when the last time they did this a couple hundred people came and they, most of them didn’t get into the country,” Lemon said. “Most of them got tuckered out before they even made it to the border.”
During the segment, Lemon also said “any one group or any one ethnicity” should never be demonized, which prompted pushback from some conservatives on Twitter who accused him of being a hypocrite.
“I actually laughed at his stand to stop demonizing while in the same breath he demonized,” one Twitter user wrote. “CNN and their talking heads are racist and they promote racism under a cloak of false logic and superiority. #CNNisracist”
“In one sentence, [Don Lemon] implored us to refrain from demonizing all people while he went ahead and demonized a specific group of people,” tweeted another. “This is how we all lose and look like a bunch of morons to the rest of the world.”
Even Donald Trump Jr. and Brit Hume of Fox News jumped into the fray.
This Wednesday night, Lemon finally responded to the backlash and didn’t back down one bit.
“Earlier this week, I made some comments about that in a conversation with Chris,” he said. “I said that the biggest terror threat in this country comes from radicals on the far right, primarily white men. That angered some people. But let’s put emotion aside and look at the cold hard facts. The evidence is overwhelming.”
After backing up his argument with some data, Lemon said people angry at his words are “missing the point.”
“We don’t need to worry about people who are thousands of miles away. The biggest threats are homegrown. The facts prove that.”
Watch the clip below:
"Let's put emotion aside, and look at the cold, hard facts. The evidence is overwhelming."@DonLemon presents the facts on domestic terrorism.#DonsTakehttps://t.co/PpH9t4Trvp pic.twitter.com/v3qDglsLaL
— CNN Tonight (@CNNTonight) November 1, 2018
Whether or not right-wing terror is more a danger than other threats such as Islamic terror is unclear based on various research.
Featured image via screen grab/YouTube
