Most of the people who appear on CNN are, unsurprisingly, liberals. However, every so often, a guest veers so far to the left that even the hosts are surprised by what that person says.
That was the case on CNN's Wednesday morning show New Day, when Michaela Angela Davis responded to a question posed by new co-host John Berman. He asked if Roseanne Barr “felt empowered” by President Donald Trump to make the racist remarks that led to the cancellation of her ABC sitcom.
“Absolutely,” the culture critic responded before going so far as to claim that everyone who voted for the Republican during the 2016 presidential campaign is a racist.
Berman’s question seemed reasonable enough for someone on CNN, as he continued:
The argument that some people are making, that Roseanne Barr maybe felt empowered to talk like this because of President Trump....I mean, look, she’s got a history of saying things like this completely on her own that have gone back before this administration. How do you counter that with the "rapid-ish" response from ABC?
“Well,” Davis replied, “they made a connection together....when Trump...touted her ratings, almost took credit for them” as the president and the comedian “made their relationship clear.”
The guest then claimed that the Republican occupant of the White House “made it more popular, I think, to be openly racist.”
As if that wasn’t liberal enough, she added: “I think it’s important that we don’t make Trump seem this untouchable thing, you know, that no one gets to be Trump but Trump. Tens of millions of people voted for him after he showed his cards for years.”
Obviously caught off guard by the comment, Berman gave the guest a chance to walk back her remark: “But are you suggesting that they're racist?” Davis nevertheless replied: "Absolutely, yes.”
"All of the people that voted for Donald Trump are racist?" the co-host asked again.
"Yes,” she stated. “They may not all be violently racist,” but Trump is “very clear and strategic” in his use of the “anti-blackness” that “has been the foundation” of his political life.
“We have to grapple with the idea that...you heard someone at their rallies say ‘Build the wall and kill them all.’”
“Listen,” fellow co-host Alisyn Camerota interrupted, “you know that people interpret this differently, and to paint with as broad a brush as you are, saying that everybody who voted for him is racist, you know how people operate.”
“They’ll compartmentalize, and they’ll say that people had compartmentalized during Bill Clinton,” Camerota added, “and you overlook the things that you’re uncomfortable with because you like the policy, so you can’t paint with that broad a brush.”
Davis still refused to back down, asserting: “Racism isn't broad, so what you're not hearing is there's so many different levels of racism and how it works itself out.”
As NewsBusters previously reported, this isn’t the first time Davis startled her CNN hosts. In September of 2016, the Black Lives Matter sympathizer responded on CNN to the fatal shooting by police officers in North Carolina of an armed black man by bemoaning white “brutality” and defending violent protesters as “burning down the plantation.”
When choosing people to be guests or panelists on CNN, the network usually makes safe selections of people who are fellow travelers on the left side of the road. However, it is certainly refreshing when one of those visitors forces the hosts to walk back something even they can’t deny is too liberal for the viewers of that cable channel.
