During an interview with syndicated columnist Mona Charen, New Day co-host Alisyn Camerota referred to Conservative Political Action Conference speakers Wayne LaPierre, Dana Loesch, and David Clarke as "some of the most extreme voices."
As head of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre has become a villain on the American left, whose intense hatred for him multiplied after the Parkland school shooting earlier this month. The media did not like it very much when LaPierre suggested that the FBI bears some responsibility for the Parkland massacre.
Loesch got into an explosive dustup with Camerota last week after the NRA spokeswoman made comments at CPAC suggesting that “legacy media loves mass shootings." When Loesch brought up the fact that an attendee of a CNN town hall on gun violence had previously equated Loesch to a “child murderer”, Camerota said that “we’ve never said that” and blasted Loesch for using “all of this heated language.”
David Clarke, who formerly served as Milwaukee County Sheriff, has appeared in NRA ads, which has obviously made him a punching bag on the left. Since resigning from his post as Sheriff last year, Clarke has joined the America First Action Super PAC.
While Charen’s comments at CPAC surely sent a thrill up the leg of many members of the liberal media, she also made some statements during her appearance on CNN that probably did not tickle their fancy as much. While Charen criticized Fox News, where Camerota formerly worked, as a bunch of “cheerleaders”, she also mentioned the “tremendous amount of bias...and special pleading on the part of the left-wing press too.” She also added that “lots of people on CNN have become nothing but critics.”
The media and the left have shown that they will do everything they can to silence the conservative movement. In the past they have used the word “deplorable” in an attempt to smear Americans who cling to their guns and religion. It looks like they now prefer the phrase “extreme voices.”
Here is a full transcript of February 26 exchange:
CNN New Day
02/26/18
08:25 AM
ALISYN CAMEROTA: So then, how do you explain what goes on at CPAC? I mean, CPAC, you know, has been, for years, the gathering of conservative voices but if you’re saying that it’s not the William F. Buckley conservatives. Now, I mean, let me just tell you some of the lineup. You know, Wayne LaPierre, Dana Loesch, Marion Le Pen, the former Sheriff David Clarke, these are some of the most extreme voices, so is that what CPAC now represents?
MONA CHAREN: That is what CPAC represents alas and but I, my point is it isn’t what conservatism represents and I just felt that if somebody said it, we would test the proposition that this is the drift of the entire Republican Party and conservative movement and the response to what I did kind of suggests no it isn’t.
CAMEROTA: Here’s what you write in your op-ed in The New York Times today. “For traditional conservatives, the past two years have felt like a Twilight Zone episode. Politicians, activists and intellectuals have succumbed with numbing regularity, betraying every principle they once claimed to uphold. But there remains a vigorous remnant of dissenters. I hear from them. There were even some at CPAC.” But to your first point about the Twilight Zone episode, what do you think it is about Donald Trump that has allowed so many conservatives to kind of, I don’t know, surrender their old conservative ideals?
CHAREN: You know, there is...there has been a tremendous demonization of the left that has gone on for many years. Now, I, I actually have been a very harsh critic of the left and the left has a lot to answer for, certainly in this country and also around the world. It’s 100 million body count for the communist movement in the 20th century. It’s, it’s one of the great evils but there has been a tendency, a slightly hysterical tendency, I believe, on the part of the American infotainment, conservative infotainment world to suggest that we are in a Civil War or something. We are in a death struggle between conservatives and liberals and that, you know, this is the Flight 93 election and that therefore, no matter what Donald Trump says or does, no matter how unacceptable his behavior, we have to be behind him because otherwise the left is going to destroy us and I think that this is overwrought and I think that if you sell your soul, then what have you achieved? What have you really won in the end?
CAMEROTA: When you say the right wing infotainment, I hear Fox News. I mean...
CHAREN: Fox is part of it. Not all of Fox. There are still some good people on Fox. But Fox is part of it for sure. Also, talk radio and the internet, Breitbart, and, you know, it’s a, it’s a, a broad group. I would say, by the way though, just to be fair, that there’s a tremendous amount of bias and, and special pleading on the part of the left wing press too and always has been and I’ve always been critical of it.
CAMEROTA: Yeah. I mean, I guess that the point is, is that Fox News originally, the at least mission statement, was to counter what they heard as left-wing bias...
CHAREN: That’s right.
CAMEROTA: And that something seems to have shifted in, in their message.
CHAREN: Now they’ve become cheerleaders and sorry but I think lots of people on CNN have become nothing but critics. I mean, the idea of just presenting the news neutrally and letting the viewer decide needs to make a comeback.
