After President Trump doubled down on calling himself a “nationalist” Tuesday, CNN went into full attack mode, with cringe-worthy George Orwell quotes read on air, bad history lessons, and comparisons to Hitler.
CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta kicked off the news cycle by “asking” Trump about his recently calling himself a nationalist.
“You know what I am? I’m a nationalist. Okay? A nationalist. Use that word,” Trump told the crowd at a rally in Texas Monday.
Acosta’s “question” to Trump in the Oval Office Tuesday was really more of an accusation, with the reporter saying, “Mr. President, just to follow up on your comments about being a nationalist–there is a concern that you are sending coded language or a dog whistle to some Americans out there that what you really mean is that you’re a white nationalist?”
Trump took Acosta to task over the question, saying, “I’ve never even heard that, I can’t imagine that.”
“All I want our country is to be treated well, to be treated with respect. For many years, other countries that are allies of ours–so-called allies–they have not treated our country fairly. So in that sense, I am absolutely a nationalist, and I’m proud of it,” Trump said.
Of course, later on CNN Tuesday night, Acosta again went after Trump, saying, “I don’t think it’s a stretch for a lot of Americans out there to wonder whether or not the president is secretly considering himself a white nationalist.”
Another CNN personality, Kaitlan Collins, went after Trump for the label, saying, “I believe in the United States! I’m not a nationalist. Hitler was a nationalist!”
“Oh, please. Come on. That term has not become like Hitler,” CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin said back.
“It has! That is why people do not use the word nationalist! Because it has a negative connotation. It is not the nationalist of Teddy Roosevelt in the 1940s,” Collins said.
Teddy Roosevelt was president from 1901-1909 and died in 1919, long before the 1940s.
[Update: Collins says in an email to Breitbart News that she did say “1920s” rather than “1940s.” The audio is unclear due to crosstalk.]
But never to be outdone, CNN’s Chris Cuomo brought everything home on his prime time show by reading George Orwell quotes on air and simply declaring that nationalism was “not American.”
“The word arguably could mean different things to different people, arguably, but here’s what it is not. It is not patriotism. It is not populism, which is about supporting the interests of ordinary folks. One more thing it is not–it is not American,” Cuomo said, also calling nationalism, “antithetical to the idea of this country.”
Of course, while CNN is fretting about comparisons to Hitler, the network still employs Marc Lamont Hill, a CNN personality who was recently outed for being chummy with Louis Farrakhan, an unabashed anti-Semite who said that “Hitler was a very great man.”
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