CNN anchor Don Lemon was once again beside himself on Friday's broadcast of "The Situation Room," furious at President Donald Trump for calling rioters "thugs" and attempting to compare these protests to the protests by conservatives in Michigan.
Of course, Lemon was teed up by none other than little Jimmy Acosta, who was concerned that President Trump's words could incite violence and made sure to bring up the president's "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," tweet. It was then that an exasperated Lemon jumped in and complained about the president calling rioters and looters "thugs":
This President traffics in racist and incendiary language all the time. Not only did he say, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts," but look at the other tweets that we put up -- and I don't know if we have them at the ready now. "Thugs," where he called people "thugs."
And once again pushing the "Trump is an unabashed racist" card, Lemon suggested that he shouldn't have used the term "thugs" because some of the rioters were white:
Well, guess what, he's calling a whole lot of people thugs because it was not only African-Americans who were in that crowd of protesters. Many of them, if not most of them from the pictures that I've seen, are of different ethnicities -- there are a lot of white people in that crowd -- in the crowd as well. So he's calling not only African-Americans which may be a dog whistle for some people in his base -- he's calling a whole lot of people "thugs."
He then tried to compare the Michigan protests to those in Minneapolis, painting the Michigan protests as violent and ignoring the fact that there was no rioting, looting, or arson during those protests:
That did not happen when we saw the 99.9 percent of people who were on state houses protesting, spitting in police officers' faces, burning flags, and wanting to liberate and open up the country. He said that those were good people who cared about their country -- they were good Americans. They were breaking rules and also putting people's health at risk. And so I don't understand the difference between those "good people" who want to liberate because they want a haircut or they're tired of sitting on their couches, and they're armed to the teeth with semi-automatic weapons, so I don't understand the difference between protesters.
