Wednesday's CNN Tonight featured the latest example of a panel in which the lone conservative guest had to fend off all the other panel members as CNN political commentator and former Donald Trump advisor Steve Cortes debated police shootings with liberal host Don Lemon, Democratic strategist Keith Boykin, and alleged conservative Shermichael Singleton who typically makes cable news appearances to agree with liberals.
Cortes was repeatedly interrupted as he tried to inject his conservative views into the discussion.
Lemon began the segment by playing a clip of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stating that the shooting of Sacramento resident Stephon Clark by two police officers is a matter "we feel should be left to local authorities at this point," with the CNN host then recalling that some are "outraged" by her response as President Trump's representative.
After Lemon asked Cortes if he was also "outraged" by Sanders's statement, Cortes tried to make an argument that police shootings have been inappropriately hyped as an issue of racial discrimination, and tried to put the matter into perspective by recalling that, out of 3,500 shootings that occurred in Chicago in 2017, only 23 were done by police officers.
Lemon jumped in to complain, "Let's not waste time here," and then suggested that there was a double standard between the President speaking out on the recent acquittal of the illegal immigrant who killed Kate Steinle in 2015. Lemon: "President Trump has weighed in on the murder of Kate Steinle, who happens to be white. ... So why is the killing of an unarmed black man any different than that?"
After Cortes recalled that one of his concerns about illegal immigrants being allowed to stay in the country is that his fellow Hispanics are more likely than non-Hispanics to be victims of crime by illegals, Lemon jumped in to complain that "you're going down a rabbit hole."
Not getting the point that enforcement of immigration laws is a federal government function so that the clearly White House has relevance to dealing with illegal immigrants, Lemon then brought up Trump's reaction to the Steinle killing again, suggesting that it was a double standard for the President not to similarly consider it a local matter. Lemon: "You're missing the point. The President of the United States is giving one story -- one group of people attention while choosing not to give another group of people attention."
A bit later, Singleton bashed Cortes as someone who does not deserve to be allowed on the show to give his views and questionably identified himself as "conservative." Singleton: "I don't understand why -- I get that we have to have opposing sides of the arguments. I'm a conservative -- i get it. But I don't know why we bring people on these networks who say the most utterly ridiculous things like everything Steve has said since we started this discussion."
As Cortes tried to make the argument that he gives the police some benefit of the doubt in trying to decide whether they are guilty of a crime, Lemon had difficulty taking it in and demanded: "Why do you always default to the side of the police officer instead of being equal and wondering what happened?"
As the conservative commentator started trying to argue that police shootings are not an issue of racism because many officers who shoot black suspects are also black, Lemon quickly jumped in again to claim he was going off the subject. He ended up complaining, "I don't understand what's going on in your head!"
The CNN host may have allowed a conservative guest to come on to take part in the debate, but then he undermined him by joining with the more liberal guests to repeatedly complain about how he was using his time and cutting his conservative guest off while he was trying to make the arguments he thought were important to make.
