CNN anchor Don Lemon said Wednesday night on his show that Americans who voted for President Donald Trump were on the side of “the Klan” and “Nazis.”
Lemon said, “We’ve got to get down to the nitty-gritty of what this is. And it is about what I said, and I standby it, preserving whiteness in the worst possible way. If you find yourself, Chris, in a crowd and the person next to you is carrying a Confederate battle flag or the person next to you has on a neo-Nazi symbol of some type or has on a ‘Camp Auschwitz’ then in your mind wouldn’t you say my goodness, I have made the wrong decision I need to get out of here?”
Fellow network anchor Chris Cuomo said, “Now what you hear is, ‘Well, you can’t say that everybody who voted for Trump is like the people who went into the Capitol. Response?”
Lemon said, “If you are on that side, you need to think about the side you are on. I am never on the side of the Klan. Principled people, conservative or liberal, never on the Klan’s side. Principled people, conservative or liberal, never on the Nazi’s side. Principled people, conservative or liberal, never on the side that treats their fellow Americans as less than, that says that your fellow Americans should not exist. That says your fellow Americans should be in a concentration camp, or sides with slavery, or sides with any sort of bigotry.”
Cuomo said, “Right, and what if they say, ‘I don’t agree with those people, I just like Trump’s policies?’
Lemon said, “Well, then get out of the crowd with them. Get out of the crowd with them.:”
He continued, “You’re in the crowd who voted for Trump. If you voted for Trump, you voted for the person who the Klan supported. You voted for the person who Nazis support. You voted for the person who the alt-right supports. That’s the crowd that you are in.”
He added, “You voted for the person who incited a crowd to go into the Capitol and potentially take the lives of lawmakers, took the lives of police officers, took the lives, innocent lives who were there on the Capitol that day. You voted on that side, and the people in Washington are continuing to vote on that side.”
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