CNN anchor Don Lemon on Tuesday evening accused President Donald Trump of appealing to “racism” by “linking Antifa to Democrats,” suggesting that Trump was tying what CNN anchors and analysts falsely claimed is a “black” group to Democrats.
“There is a racial component to this because he is linking Antifa to Democrats. But in that statement, you didn’t hear anything because… the first we heard of this President mentioning Antifa was for Charlottesville, right? So we haven’t heard him link neo-Nazis to Republicans,” Lemon said. “So there is an appeal to racism here.”
Lemon was referring to Trump’s comment about the violent (and mostly-white) nationwide group to Evangelical leaders on Monday evening. Trump reportedly told Evangelical leaders that they are “one election away from losing everything” and if Republicans lose Congress, the radical left will try to “end everything immediately.”
“They will overturn everything that we’ve done and they’ll do it quickly and violently,” Trump reportedly said. “And violently. There’s violence. When you look at Antifa, and you look at some of these groups, these are violent people.”
CNN’s April Ryan did not push back against Lemon’s false charge. Instead, she piled on and pushed CNN’s false Antifa narrative by saying Trump knows “his base has a real issue with the issue of race.”
“Race is that thing that makes this President tick. He started with birtherism and he has continued on and on. And his base rallies behind him,” Ryan continued. “But it is dividing the nation. And he has not apologized, taken anything back. And it is not a good look for a president of the United States, and it is dividing the country, when he says he is a unifier.
Lemon made his remarks hours after CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin insisted, despite the fact that Antifa members are mostly white, that “Antifa is widely perceived as an African-American organization” to try to advance CNN’s “racist Trump” narrative.
“Let’s be clear also about what’s going on here. The theme here is, ‘I’m Donald Trump and I’ll protect you from the scary black people.’ Antifa is widely perceived as an African-American organization, and this is just part of the same story of LeBron James and Don Lemon and Maxine Waters and the NFL players and the UCLA basketball players,” Toobin said. “This is about black versus white. This is about Donald Trump’s appeal to racism and it just happens all the time. And we never say it. We don’t say it enough for what it is, but that’s what’s going on here.”
Lemon, who has used his primetime show to call Trump a “racist” whenever he gets a chance, has previously said that it is his “obligation” as a mainstream media journalist to call Trump a “racist” and also claimed Trump “traffics in racism” like Roseanne Barr.