In the wee hours of Tuesday morning during CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, the panel discussion descended into borderline chaos as guests and the host engaged in a wild shouting match. It all started when the topic of Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s convention speech was brought up. “Rudy Giuliani's speech tonight was rousing. It was. It was the definition of rousing,” stated Black Lives Matter supporter Bakari Sellers, “But it was also the definition of divisive.”
Sellers’ shot at Giuliani came after, Donald Trump supporter, Andy Dean reminded the group that Giuliani was the reason New York City’s crime rate dropped so dramatically. Dean noted that, “New York City was a cesspool before Giuliani.”
Host Don Lemon pounced on Dean claiming, “New York wasn’t a cesspool. I lived there, it wasn’t a cesspool.” But Lemon’s claim is misleading, it has been widely documented that during the 1980s and early 90s, particularly during the Crack Epidemic, New York City was a rough place to live.
Lemon was openly hostile to the GOP convention. In responding to Sellers’ comment, that Giuliani’s speech was “the definition of divisive” Lemon sniped saying, “Well that’s what they’re here for. It is the Republican convention.”
Lemon and Sellers, in a tag team style, attacked Dean and, Trump supporter, Kayleigh McEnany about why they hated Black Lives Matter. “It means black lives matters, too, because we have a question in this country about the value of black lives. And that’s all we’re saying,” shouted Sellers. “Why is that so hard to understand? Answer the question,” Lemon demanded of McEnany.
After, literally, several minutes of being shouted at McEnany was able get in her counter. She agreed that there were circumstances of racial bias in policing, but didn’t agree with BLM’s direction, “when it gets to the point where an entire profession is demonized, which is what Andy is saying and he’s right, and we have police being slaughtered because there is such distrust of the police—”
She was quickly cut off by Lemon who insisted, “But we don’t know the cause of that though.” In referencing the recent police ambushes Lemon argued, “We don't have a 100 percent connection between what's being said and officers being slaughtered.”
But it’s hard to separate the two when BLM chants, “pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon,” and the Dallas and Baton Rouge shooters who say they aimed to kill police officers.