On Thursday morning, CNN’s New Day continued the nearly week long “President Trump is a racist” media storm. One of the liberal journalist guests on the program went further, smearing all Trump supporters as racists.
The hosts turned to Tiffany Cross, the managing editor of The Beat DC, and it was clear that she went on the show with a mission: paint all Trump supporters as bigoted white supremacists:
But when you are backing a candidate who has made his entire campaign about white identity politics, about how white people are getting the short end of the stick, and he has backed that up with racist rhetoric, racist policies, racist action and this is the camp you're in, then you do identify with some level of racism. You do fall in the category of white supremacy.
Cross was adamant that the media should forgo terms like “racially charged” in exchange for alienating half the country by calling the President a white supremacist:
Listen, this is not anything that's shocking to a lot of people across the country. We've known this. I think it's, you know, challenging for some of us to watch when we've seen over the past few years for us to describe these comments as “racially charged” or “some people perceive them to be as racist.” We have to start calling this out and say this President is a white supremacist.
She also made an astounding leap of logic. Apparently, the individuals who voted for President Obama and then switched to Trump in 2016, did it because “they held hostile views on race”:
There's a study by UCLA, UC Irvine, and Princeton that shows the number one reason that people switch from Democrat to Republican to vote for Obama and then vote for Trump was because they all held hostile views on race.
Somehow supporters of a former black president are now racist because they shifted towards Trump? Her wild accusations were even too much for host Alisyn Camerota, who pushed back on this falsely cited study and offered real insight into how much of the country feels about “white privilege”:
Well, hold on. I do just want to say one thing about what you just said, because we read the top line of that UC Davis research as well. And it's that some whites who voted for Trump, it's not that they love the racist talk. It's that they don't feel that they've ever benefitted from white privilege. Their kids may go to substandard public schools. They haven't coasted on whatever people think is white privilege. And so they feel that race -- all the talk of race hasn't worked for them. I just think that's a little bit different than them being driven by racist animus.
When CNN regularly hosts guests with radical views like Cross, they normalize them. The media is attempting to make race a central issue in the 2020 election. Former Obama supporters aren’t even safe from the vitriol of left. Based on this week’s news cycle, it’s clear that the divisive nature of American politics will only continue to get more polarized moving forward.
Here is the relevant transcript from the segment:
CNN's New Day
07/18/2019
6:10 a.m. Eastern
ALISYN CAMEROTA: Tiffany, I think that it’s so telling it was on teleprompter. You know, that means somebody wrote it, and usually the President, I think, doesn't write his teleprompter speeches, and that means, as John said, it's a campaign strategy. They're not going to talk about the economy. He's going to talk about these incendiary issues and that, you know, bring up these chants about racial tension. And so he thinks that that's a more winning strategy than the economy. What does that tell us?
TIFFANY CROSS [MANAGING EDITOR OF THE BEAT DC]: Well, it tells us he thinks it's a winning strategy because that's what worked for him in the last election. Listen, these attacks are nothing new. He is a one trick pony, and this is what he does. He needed a new face to put behind his racist rhetoric. I’m really happy that everybody else has caught up, because had we called a thing a thing in 2016 when he kicked off his campaign – or in 2015 when he kicked off his campaign by calling Mexicans rapists and drug dealers. I mean, we've known for decades when he called for the execution of the Central Park Five, now the Exonerated Five. In 2011, when he accused the first black president, President Barack Obama, of being born in Africa. Listen, this is not anything that's shocking to a lot of people across the country. We've known this. I think it's, you know, challenging for some of us to watch when we've seen over the past few years for us to describe these comments as “racially charged” or “some people perceive them to be as racist.” We have to start calling this out and say this President is a white supremacist.
We also have to stop perpetuating this false narrative that he was elected because of economic woes. Because the white working class thought he would save them. That's not true and the date shows that. There's a study by UCLA, UC Irvine, and Princeton that shows the number one reason that people switch from Democrat to Republican to vote for Obama and then vote for Trump was because they all held hostile views on race. When we looked at his rallies in 2015 and '16 and when you heard the rhetoric, the racist rhetoric coming from people in the rallies, the signs that they held up, the sound bites they gave, it was all very consistent with what this President said. So it's not new, it's not a new strategy. This is very consistent. I take David's point that, you know, we'll have to see if this crowd is dwarfed, because even though they don't represent the majority of the country. They do over-index at the ballot box.
CAMEROTA: Well, hold on. I do just want to say one thing about what you just said, because we read the top line of that UC Davis research as well. And it's that some whites who voted for Trump, it's not that they love the racist talk. It's that they don't feel that they've ever benefitted from white privilege. Their kids may go to substandard public schools. They haven't coasted on whatever people think is white privilege. And so they feel that race -- all the talk of race hasn't worked for them. I just think that's a little bit different than them being driven by racist animus.
CROSS: Yeah, but let me push back on that a little bit, Alisyn. Because when -- so a lot of people I think hold that safe view. You know, they feel like they're not like those other people. They're not like racists. But when you are backing a candidate who has made his entire campaign about white identity politics, about how white people are getting the short end of the stick, and he has backed that up with racist rhetoric, racist policies, racist action and this is the camp you're in, then you do identify with some level of racism. You do fall in the category of white supremacy. You cannot back a racist and then say no, but I don't -- I only support "X," "Y," and "Z" but don't support his racism. That's not the way the rest of the country can perceive those kind of racist attacks and things that promote and perpetuate white supremacy in this country.
