On Monday’s CNN Tonight, anchor Don Lemon devoted a segment to questioning a picture of the latest class of White House interns, which is overwhelmingly white. Lemon also showed a picture of Obama’s 2014 interns, which was much more racially diverse. Lemon asked “Are we going backwards?”
Ryan Saavedra of the Daily Wire reports the conversation devolved into alleged Republican Tara Setmayer excusing racial slurs for black conservatives. It was a typical three-on-one fight. On the right was Christopher Harris of Unhyphenated America. On the left was Lemon, CNN Democratic analyst Symone Sanders, and CNN "Republican" analyst Tara Setmayer. Tara lit the Molotov cocktail:
DON LEMON: If the Republican Party wants to have more diverse interns and African-Americans, then maybe you should ... [Crosstalk] Hold on. Let me finish my point. Maybe you should have a better message, which is appealing to people of color, and then you will have more people of color who want to be a part of your particular organization. Doesn't that stand to reason?
HARRIS: But here's the problem with that, Don.
SETMAYER: Better messengers.
HARRIS: It takes, first of all, it takes somebody with very thick skin to go out there and be black and say, I'm a Republican, I'm a conservative because what's going to happen is they're going to come on your network --LEMON: You got one right here [referring to Setmayer].
SETMAYER: Yeah, I've lived it for 25 years.
HARRIS: What's going to happen is they're going to come on your network and they're going to be called everything but a child of God, they're going be called an Uncle Tom, a coon, and everything like that.
SETMAYER: What are you talking about?
HARRIS: And so first things first -- are you going to sit there and act like that's not true?
SETMAYER: Well, if you act like it and someone calls you out on it, then we can't do anything about that. Maybe the messenger needs to be better.
HARRIS: So it's OK to actually call someone a particular name as long as you feel like they're acting like that. Is that what you're saying, Tara?
SETMAYER: I didn't say that, I'm just saying that --
HARRIS: That's what you just said.
SETMAYER: You can't blame people for being called certain names if they behave in certain ways if they behave a certain way. If you're a terrible messenger, you're going to get that kind of scrutinism, kind of scrutiny --
LEMON: You are getting off the message.
HARRIS: It's OK to call names. Is that what you're saying, Tara? That's what she's saying. She's saying it's OK to call someone a name --
SETMAYER: I'm not saying it's OK and you're deflecting because your argument is weak.
Lemon then turned to the next anti-Trump topic: Was Donald Trump Jr. trolling because he wore a "Deplorable" pin to the Easter Egg Roll? They cover all the substantive stories on CNN Tonight.
