Don Lemon Loses It in Rant About Black GOP Senator - But Look What He Left Out
If CNN’s Don Lemon wasn’t really trying to make himself look foolish on Wednesday, he deserved an Emmy for acting like it.
The most melodramatic “anchor” on cable television decided to use his nightly program as a launching pad to attack Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina– raising his voice like a ham actor trying to make up in volume for what he lacks in talent.
But all the shouting in the world couldn’t cover the crucial facts Lemon left out.
At the heart of Lemon’s rant was a response to a Scott statement Monday on Fox News, where he addressed the current rage among the American left against black people who support conservative politics.
Dubbing the new totalitarians the “woke supremacists,” Scott told former Rep. Trey Gowdy, according to The Washington Times, that “woke supremacists are as bad as white supremacists.”
If anything, Scott was underplaying how bad “woke supremacists” are for the country as a whole.
But for a woke supremacist like Lemon, the truth hurt.
Check out Lemon’s diatribe here:
“Tim Scott is the only black — the only — only — black Republican in the Senate,” Lemon said, openly expressing irritation. “Telling Fox News — of course Fox News — that what he calls ‘woke supremacy is as bad as white supremacy.’
“Do you want to explain who these woke supremacists are?” Lemon went on slowly, now addressing the South Carolina senator directly. “I’ve never seen a woke supremacist lynching anybody. Never saw a woke supremacist denying anybody access to housing or a job or education or voting rights. Never seen any woke supremacists enslaving anybody. Never saw any woke supremacists trying to keep people from marrying amongst different races.”
Lemon then played clips from the Jan. 6 incursion of the Capitol as he continued his spiel.
“Where are the woke supremacists hunting police officers in the halls of the Capitol and beating them with Blue Lives Matter signs with white supremacist insignia on their shirts? And carrying white supremacist paraphernalia,” Lemon continued. “Guess who I saw. Guess who police officers were beaten by. Guess who wanted to hang the vice president. White supremacists, Tim Scott! What are you doing?
“Tim, have to. I know you don’t want me to yell, but this is ridiculous!” Lemon said. “You are gaslighting people. You are giving people misinformation. What are you doing, brother? What were you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? You’re not helping.”
Well, first of all, when a CNN host accuses anyone outside the network of “giving misinformation,” the irony is almost unbearable. (Pots meeting kettles and all that.)
Second, Lemon, as is typical of liberals, left quite a bit out.
The context of Scott’s statement is crucial, since he wasn’t simply opining on the nature of the modern left. As The Washington Times reported, he was responding specifically to a direct — and disgusting –comment by MSNBC’s Joy Reid, who mocked Scott during a segment last week as a “patina of diversity” on the Republican Party.
In its casual cruelty, Reid’s comment was as vicious as any racial slur directed at the South Carolina senator. The fact that Scott responded with a generalized statement about the left’s “woke supremacy” than a personal attack on Reid herself speaks volumes about the man’s character.
What Lemon also left out, and what CNN viewers might never have noticed, is that his focus on the Jan. 6 violence in the Capitol made it sound like it had taken place in a vacuum. As inexcusable as the incursion was, it was a pale shadow of the violence Americans saw throughout most of 2020.
There might not have been “woke supremacists” in the halls of Congress in January, but in the months before they were roaming the streets of American cities, bringing swaths of leftist destruction to places like Chicago, Kenosha, Wisconsin, Louisville, Kentucky, Minneapolis, New York City, Philadelphia, Portland, Oregon, Seattle, and St. Louis.
Americans with even a passing interest in the news might recall that a fair number of police officers were wounded in the violence, too.
By contrast, actual “white supremacists,” as opposed to the kind the liberal mainstream media keep talking about, are more fiction than fact — the boogeyman of the modern left.
CNN is the network, remember, where a correspondent famously declared the Kenosha protests “mostly peaceful” even while the night sky was lit behind him by flames from buildings that had been put to the torch. And Don Lemon wants to talk about gaslighting?
In the liberal-dominated landscape of social media, Lemon had plenty of supporters, of course. But there was a fair amount of pushback, too.
Mr. Lemon thinks there is some sort of journalistic supremacy on his part that allows him to evaluate and make judgments on all matters involving race. Yes, there is a problem with white supremacy, and there also is a problem with woke supremacy, that is the key point here.
— Bill Outlaw (@BillOutlaw) March 11, 2021
@donlemon Just because you speak in a #flamboyant way, doesn’t mean your ideas aren’t laughable. Let me help you.. Start here.. #WokeSupremacy = #BlackLivesMatter They lynch, want segregation, attack police, etc. ???
— square it up (@RSBird1) March 11, 2021
@donlemon Just because you speak in a #flamboyant way, doesn’t mean your ideas aren’t laughable. Let me help you.. Start here.. #WokeSupremacy = #BlackLivesMatter They lynch, want segregation, attack police, etc. ???
— square it up (@RSBird1) March 11, 2021
Definitely worst. Haven’t seen a real white supremacist in my life but I have seen people real or fictional literally get erased over a spicy opinion.
— Jemal Baraka (@JemalBaraka) March 11, 2021
Finally, Lemon’s emphasis on Scott’s standing as the sole black Republican of the United States Senate implied that the Democratic Party was somehow hip deep in African-American members of the upper chamber.
It’s true that Scott is the “only — only — black Republican in the Senate,” as Lemon might put it, and there are only — only — two black Democrats in the chamber: Cory Booker of New Jersey and Raphael Warnock of Georgia. If Warnock, who won the seat in a special election on Jan. 5, is not re-elected next year, Booker will be the only — only — black Democrat in the Senate.
Will Lemon be sneering then?
For a party that preens about its championing of people of color, white Senate Democrats haven’t been scrambling to give up their seats.
None of that matters to liberals like Lemon, though. And it can’t matter to regular viewers of CNN.
But sane people understand reality. And here’s a little more:
The reality is that Tim Scott is no “patina” — the very word is an insult.
The reality is that if there was anything wrong with what Scott said, it’s that he let the “woke supremacists” off the hook.
And the reality is that when it comes to acting like a duplicitous fool, Don Lemon doesn’t have to try very hard at all.
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