Appearing as a guest on Monday's CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin, liberal CNN political commentator Carl Bernstein chided Hillary Clinton and other Democrats for "parsing" on the words "Islamic terror" and warned that Donald Trump will inspire an "anti-Muslim pogrom" in the U.S. unless Muslims have a Million Muslim March against terrorism.
At one point, Bernstein came to the borderline of making an embarrassing verbal flub as it sounded like he almost uttered an anti-gay slur while pronouncing the name of openly gay former Democratic Congressman Barney Frank -- a slip-up similar to the one that got former Republican Congressman Dick Armey in trouble over twenty years ago.
At 3:53 p.m. ET, the CNN commentator began by lamenting Trump's "abhorrent' speech reacting to the Orlando terror attacks, but also chided Clinton and Democrats as he began his analysis:
First, I thought Trump was predictably abhorrent, and I thought he was terribly, terribly effective in a way he hasn't been till now, that his speech will appeal to independents, even some Democrats, and certainly Republicans, because Hillary Clinton, Obama, and the Democrats are very late to acknowledge by name that there is a real threat of Islamic terrorism in this country and all over the world. And they've been very reluctant to use the word "Islamic terror," and it's coming back to haunt them.
Bernstein further went after the "real semantic problems" of Democrats and recalled former Rep. Frank's criticism of his fellow Democrats as he continued:
I think she's got real semantic problems, and that it comes very late, and trying to parse things that this point. And the important point that Barney Frank -- the former, you know, liberal, gay Congressman from Massachusetts made today is that the left and the Democrats have got to start acknowledging the problem of Islamic terrorism, call it what it is, and come up for a real strategy for dealing with it. And the impression Trump gave today with some effectiveness -- despite his almost neo-fascist rhetoric -- is that the Democrats haven't done that. There's a long way to go.
He then called for a Million Muslim March to head off a Trump-inspired "pogrom" as he continued:
There is no movement in this country -- and Trump got to this -- by the American Muslim, peace-loving, community to stage anti-terror marches. Why isn't there a million-person Muslim march on Washington against terror? We are going to have an anti-Muslim pogrom in this country if Trump continues to say some of the things he says, and if the American Muslim community -- and, indeed, Muslims all over the world -- who don't believe in the terrorist agenda of, quote, "radical Islam," don't start doing things in their own backyards.
As host Brooke Baldwin began closing the segment, Bernstein jumped back in to reiterate former Rep. Frank's criticism of Democrats and flubbed his line as it sounded like he started to pronounce the letter "g" of the word "fag" but just barely stopped short and swtiched to "Frank" instead: "That's what Barney Fa- -- Frank was talking about."
