Appearing as a guest on Friday's Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN, and again later on CNN Tonight, CNN political commentator Carl Bernstein charged that Donald Trump's choices for his administration so far are "radically divisive choices," alleging that he made his choices 'in an ugly way" that sends a message to minorities that his administration will not put a priority on protecting civil rights.
At one point, he seemed to compare Attorney General nominee and GOP Senator Jeff Sessions to being like former KKK member and former Alabama Democratic Senator Hugo Black, who he recalled was appointed to the Supreme Court and became a "great liberal" justice whom Sessions could potentially emulate.
At about 8:09 p.m. ET, during Anderson Cooper 360, Bernstein fretted:
These choices reflect what he said in the campaign at his most extreme in terms of how we look at Muslims and how we take on ISIS, which is a strategy that he has enunciated -- it might lose us rather than have us win in this terrible struggle against radical Islamic terrorism, and I'll use that phrase. But it's a very, very dangerous strategy he's embarked on.
It was a bit later that Bernstein recounted the importance of the Justice Department in enforcing civil rights laws:
That's the sadness here. The Department of Justice -- great Attorneys General like Robert Kennedy -- the reason we have civil rights in this country and they have been enforced has been because of great Attorneys General. Jeff Sessions is not someone who has made his mark by becoming a great advocate for civil rights in this country. That's the sadness of this.
He then brought up ex-KKK members who repented and promoted civil rights, as if a comparison could be made to Sessions, as he added:
Look, there have been people who were in the Ku Klux Klan and Senators from Alabama -- namely Hugo Black -- who became a great liberal Supreme Court justice and was confirmed by the Senate after he had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
I don't think we're going to see -- I would love it if Jeff Sessions becomes a great advocate for civil rights for all Americans -- but -- he's going to win in the confirmation hearing -- but you can't look at this appointment separate from the other four names we've been talking about and what that signal is to all Americans of where Donald Trump is going. And they are, quite frankly, poking in the eye.
At 10:25 p.m. ET, during a panel discussion on CNN Tonight, the liberal CNN commentator tore into Trump's announced cabinet nominees again and pointed them as a threat to minorities:
These are radically divisive choices. Instead of Donald Trump seeing a way to unify the country, he has chosen division, and this is what we now face. He's not only chosen division, he's chosen it in an ugly way that says to African-Americans, says to Muslim-Americans, says to immigrants, says to people who believe in civil rights that, "We are going in the other direction. It is not important to us that we protect your civil rights as the foremost and most important thing that we do in this country. Instead, we are going in another direction. We're going to fight Islamic terrorism, but, in the process, we are going to forget about the rights that ought to be foremost in the minds of most Americans."
