On Wednesday's CNN Tonight, host Don Lemon complained about conservatives repeatedly calling out the media who have attacked President Donald Trump for doing things that President Barack Obama also did to combat illegal immigration.
Shortly after 10:00 p.m. Eastern, as CNN host Chris Cuomo was concluding his own show and handing off to Lemon, the two were oblivious to the issue of the media trying to hold President Trump to a stricter standard than President Obama on the issue of how illegal immigrants should be treated.
Reacting to the recent arguments made by conservatives that the liberal media have complained about the Trump administration using teargas against illegal immigrants attacking Border Patrol officers even though they ignored it when the Obama administration also used tear gas, Lemon complained:
This is the thing that galls me the most: Every time you point out something that's happening now that should not be happening, the knee-jerk response is, "Well, Obama did it. Somebody else did it, you know, Hillary Clinton," and nobody wants to take responsibility for what's happening now. None of the people that they always blame, the knee-jerk response, go back to, "Well, this person did it and this happened under this administration," none of these people are in power now.
He then claimed:
And when the previous administrations were doing it, if they were, then people took notice. Maybe they did in some instances, maybe they didn't, but the outrage in that time was seen, and it happened then, that was then, this is now. Can't we deal with what's happening now?
Cuomo claimed that such talk is an "excuse" and "poisoned politics" as he responded:
Yeah, I mean, look, it's an excuse, Don. I mean, that's what it is. It's just politics wouldn't work in any other phase of your existence. You'd never get away with that, you know, here at work or at home as a rationale. That's politics and it's poisoned politics.
He then added: "And it also happens to not be true. We've never seen caravans amassing of this size this way. We've never had a President -- not in our lifetime -- talk about people the way that this man does. We never had a President like this."
Lemon responded:
You hit the nail on the head because people say, "Well, there were" -- what do you call it? Tear gas or those bullets, right? That they said, you know, "That happened under Obama." Okay, that may have happened under Obama -- the instance I read about, it was one border agent who was there who had to defend himself because there was a crowd, and he did it.
The CNN host then added: "But no President has stirred up hate -- no modern President that I know of has stirred up hate against people -- has stirred up controversy against people -- stirred up anger. And so there is a difference."
