Musician Ted Nugent has come under fire for recent comments he made where he referred to President Obama as a “communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel.” Since then, CNN has been leading the charge condemning Nugent for his aggressive rhetoric made at the president.
Despite the highly offensive nature of Nugent’s rant, CNN’s Erin Burnett awkwardly played a clip of President Obama using the same word as Nugent in a 2012 appearance on “The View” before the CNN host claimed that “the only use of the word mongrel that I could find in common talk, because you're talking about street talk, was actually the Aryan Nation membership form.” [See video below.]
After initially cancelling an appearance with Ms. Burnett, Nugent finally agreed to appear on CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront program on February 24, to discuss his explosive rhetoric. The CNN host admitted that prior to Nugent’s appearance, the rocker had asked Burnett to play “The View” tape which had in fact showed President Obama using the word mongrel in 2010. At the time, Obama argued that:
The interesting thing about the African-American experience in this country is that we are sort of a mongrel of people. I mean we are all kind of mixed up. Now, that's actually true for white America as well, but we just know more about it.
After allowing Nugent to respond to Obama’s 2010 comments, Burnett ridiculously claimed that “the only use of the word mongrel that I could find in common talk, because you're talking about street talk, was actually the Arian Nation membership form.”
It's irionic that Ms. Burnett would condemn Newgent's use of the very same word that President Obama used to discribe himself in 2010 yet the CNN host only played the clip after Nugent requested she do so.
Unsurprisingly, this is not the first time CNN has gotten in trouble over its outrage regarding Nugent’s offensive language. Just last week, Newt Gingrich, co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire” slammed CNN for “selective outrage” over the Ted Nugent controversy because in his words “Democrats have lots of donors and supporters who say truly stupid things. Truly outrageous things” without CNN giving them as much coverage as they have with Nugent.
See relevant transcript below.
CNN
Erin Burnett OutFront
February 25, 2014
7:36 p.m. Eastern
ERIN BURNETT: But I want to ask you because this is the question a lot of people have, You know, I read your Twitter feed today, and you told me on Twitter @ErinBurnett, you said, hey, you better have "The View" tape ready, and I thought, what is "The View" tape? And I found it Ted, and here is what it is for our viewers. This is when the President Obama used the word mongrel in the summer of 2010. I wanted to play what he said about mongrel and what you said. Here goes.
TED NUGENT: I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod if not shamed enough Americans to be ever-vigilant not to let a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel like the ACORN community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama to weasel his way into the top office of authority in the United States of America.
BARACK OBAMA: And the interesting thing about the African-American experience in this country is that we are sort of a mongrel of people. I mean we are all kind of mixed up. Now, that's actually true for white America as well, but we just know more about it. And so I'm less interested in how we label ourselves. I'm more interested in how we treat each other. And if we're treating each other right, then I can be African-American, I can be multi-racial, I can be, you name it, what matters is am I showing people respect, am I caring for other people? That’s I think the message we want to send.
BURNETT: So what do you think, Ted?
NUGENT: Well, number one, thank you, Erin, for playing that tape as I requested. And I appreciate you monitoring my Twitter account. I think you know what I think, I think the president is intentionally disassembling the greatest quality of life in the history of the world. I believe that he is creating class warfare intentionally to get Americans to draw this line in the sand where I have never seen such political discourse in all my life. And yes, I do apologize for being part of that political discourse because greater men than myself have advised me that that kind of street language in a volatile interview as you played earlier is not appropriate when we’re trying to get some upgrade here in America, but I cannot put into adequate terms the condemnation I feel and so many Americans feel that this president's fundamental transformation of this country is indeed the destruction of the American dream of being compensated based on being the best you can be. The concept of social justice and economic equality is truly bizarre. The president's a bad man. I want to make sure that Americans are encouraged to be the best that they can be, not to be compensated for not even trying. I really believe history will show that I've been right and the president and CNN was wrong.
BURNETT: So I want to understand, because a lot of people want to understand, and look, I understand you're saying now I want to elevate the discussion. I think a lot of people are going to say, that's great, if you started to do that, but I want to understand why you used the word mongrel when you did, okay? Because obviously we looked around, I looked it up in the dictionary, I'm sure you have at this point as well, the definition is a dog of mixed or undetermined breed, and the only use of the word mongrel that I could find in common talk, because you're talking about street talk, was actually the Arian Nation membership form where you have to affirm, I’ll quote, I'm an employed white Christian. I concur that Aryan Nations is only Aryans of Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Nordic, Basque, Lombard Celtic, and Slavic origin. I agree with Aryan Nations’ Biblical exclusion of Jews, Negroes, Mexicans, Orientals, and Mongrels. That's the only use I could find of that word. Did you mean it?
