On Thursday evening, CNN Tonight host Don Lemon suffered yet another anti-conservative meltdown on live television. He begged viewers to to get “in front of the television, right now,” so they wouldn’t miss a second of his seventeen-minute rant about the newly passed voting legislation in the state of Georgia.
The race-baiting anchor began by playing a clip of Georgia State Representative Park Cannon being arrested for attempting to obstruct and preclude Governor Brian Kemp (R-GA) from signing the voting reform bill into law. The video appeared to depict Cannon knocking, several times, on the governor’s office door, after law enforcement officers repeatedly instructed her not to do so. Cannon is escorted out of the state capitol and taken into custody. After the clip, the leftist hack host rhetorically asked viewers how they “[felt] about that” and asked twice if they were “outraged”:
Hmm. How do you feel about that? Are you outraged? I know you have some sort of emotion around it. I know you’re feeling something around it. And you should be passionate about it. That’s the only way you change things. Are you outraged?
A journalist’s job, apparently, is to tell you how to feel, not present you with neutral facts and allow you to formulate your own opinions. Even if viewers were outraged, that was insufficient for Lemon; later in the segment, he called for “a little more outrage” and “a little more indignation from everyone,” regarding Cannon’s apprehension.
Lemon went on to disingenuously delineate the bill as legislation that “is about nothing less than taking away the right to vote.” And, of course, no episode of CNN Tonight would be complete without some unsubstantiated accusation of racism. Not failing to disappoint, the hate-filled anchor slammed Kemp for daring to be in a photograph with (gasp) other “white men”:
“The governor of Georgia, his name is Brian Kemp, you know him, proudly signing a bill that, among other things, would make giving food or water to a voter waiting in line a misdemeanor, allowing unlimited challenges to voter registrations and allow state officials to replace local election officials. Make no mistake about it. This bill is about nothing less than taking away the right to vote. That is all it is, plain and simple. A right that generations of Americans fought and died for. And the governor, proud to sign it. Well, he's proud enough to sign the bill in front of cameras and what looks to be a room full of white men. Look at the picture on your screen. Now, they were in there. Why weren't they arrested? Huh? Proud to sign that a bill full of a room of men who look like him; proud to tweet it out as well.”
During the seemingly interminable, rage-filled monologue, the left-wing shill reminded viewers six times that Cannon was an “elected representative,” as if simply holding elected office absolves someone from blame or culpability.
Lemon bemoaned the fact that Cannon wasn’t allowed to witness the signing of the bill since she was black and paid her taxes. “An elected official, a black woman in Georgia, remember that,” the race-obsessed host asserted, “arrested knocking on the door of the state capitol that her tax dollars helps [sic] to pay for, and yours.”
You should, in fact, be outraged, but by the left-wing media’s demonstrable and blatant hypocrisy.
Don Lemon’s superfluous gaslighting and justification for the obstruction of the signing of a bill was brought to you, in part, by Priceline. Contact this advertiser and others via the Media Research Center’s Conservatives Fight Back website, conveniently linked above.
Please click “Expand” to read the entire transcript from March 25:
CNN Tonight with Don Lemon
03/25/2021
10:00:15 PM Eastern
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: THIS IS THE FACE OF THE FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE]
DON LEMON: This is "CNN Tonight." I'm Don Lemon. Thank you so much for joining. And I just want you to—whatever you're doing, I know sometimes you sit at home and you watch this and you may be falling half asleep, in the bathroom, taking off your makeup, with the kids. But I want to make sure you're in front of the television, right now, because what I'm about to show you and tell you is very important. Very important for the country. Because what you're about to see right now is the face of the fight for your right to vote. Here it is.
[CUTS TO CLIP OF GEORGIA REPRESENTATIVE GETTING APPREHENDED IN STATE CAPITOL]
[DON LEMON VOICEOVER]
LEMON: So what you see right there and what you're hearing, this is Georgia State Representative Park Cannon. She is being arrested and removed from the state capitol after knocking on that door during Governor Brian Kemp's signing of that assault, really, on your vote, what results to an assault on your vote. In a video that was posted to social media, and you're going to see it here in moments, Cannon is led away by several officers with her hand cuffed behind her back. Right here she's trying to reason with the officer. Remember, she is an elected representative.
You can hear others there demanding, demanding that officers not arrest her. So, I just want you to watch this and I want you to remember, she's an elected representative that is being removed as the governor is signing this bill.
[CLIP ENDS]
10:03:41 PM Eastern
LEMON: Hmm. How do you feel about that? Are you outraged? I know you have some sort of emotion around it. I know you're feeling something around it. And you should be passionate about it. That's the only way you change things. Are you outraged? The attorney Gerald Griggs is telling CNN that he's representing Cannon. He's working to bond her out of jail after she was booked on felony obstruction charges. CNN has reached out to multiple sources on what happened there, tonight, including the police. That is apparently how far that they are willing to go to keep an elected representative—elected representative from watching the governor sign a bill to take away the voting rights of many people in Georgia. The governor of Georgia, his name is Brian Kemp, you know him, proudly signing a bill that, among other things, would make giving food or water to a voter waiting in line a misdemeanor, allowing unlimited challenges to voter registrations and allow state officials to replace local election officials. Make no mistake about it. This bill is about nothing less than taking away the right to vote. That is all it is, plain and simple.
A right that generations of Americans fought and died for. And the governor, proud to sign it. Well, he's proud enough to sign the bill in front of cameras and what looks to be a room full of white men. Look at the picture on your screen. Now, they were in there. Why weren't they arrested? Huh? Proud to sign that a bill full of a room of men who look like him; proud to tweet it out as well. That same governor, who, just months ago, put out tweets calling the late Congressman John Lewis a civil rights icon and a freedom fighter. Well, John Lewis would have been the first one out there fighting against this. The bill the governor signed tonight is a slap in the face to John Lewis, who gave his life, who risked his life for the right to vote. Whose skull was fractured, who was arrested more than 40 times, all for the right to vote. And tonight Governor Kemp is taking away that right from the people he was elected to serve.
The vote is one of the pillars of our democracy and is no coincidence this is happening in the state that helped Joe Biden win the White House, the state that gave Democrats control of the Senate. No coincidence at all. Georgia Republicans are making it harder for a whole lot of people of color, most of whom support Democrats, to vote. President Joe Biden is passionate in his first press conference today about protecting the most sacred right we have as Americans, the right to vote, railing against voter suppression efforts, calling them sick and un-American.
[CUTS TO CLIP OF JOE BIDEN AT PRESS CONFERENCE]
JOE BIDEN [PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES]: What I'm worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is. It's sick. It's sick. Deciding in some states that you cannot bring water to people standing in line waiting to vote? Deciding that you're going to end voting at 5:00 when working people are just getting off work? Deciding that there will be no absentee ballots under the most rigid circumstances?
LEMON: And the President is right. It is un-American. It is an assault on your right to vote. [DEEP EXHALATION] I've been telling you for, what, months now about what we're dealing with in this country. It is plain – I hate – I just – I hate to keep talking about it, but you have to. This is just out and out racist. That's all it is. They’re trying to—it is built on a lie that people of color in urban centers and big urban areas around the country, that they somehow did something fraudulent, that they stole an election, when it was proven over and over and over, by Republican officials, lawmakers, Republican legislators, election officials, court cases, the Supreme Court, that it was a lie. And now, they have enacted into law legislation that was built on a lie about the election. And all of a sudden they want election integrity because people have concerns about the integrity of the election. Why do they have those concerns? Because you lied to them about it. That's why they have those concerns. So what you're doing is a lie on top of a lie on top of another lie. It is no different than Jim Crow. A poll tax with a different name and a different method, that's what it is. This is the jelly beans in the jar of 2021. How many?
So in order for Joe Biden to do something, the current president, he's got to somehow work his way around the filibuster. What happens? The filibuster requires 60 votes for major legislation, like the federal voting rights bill in the Senate, right now. And that would make passing that federal bill impossible. President Joe Biden saying that the filibuster is being abused in a gigantic way, and singling—signaling, excuse me, that he may support reform. Here he is.
[CUTS TO CLIP OF JOE BIDEN AT PRESS CONFERENCE]
LEMON: Okay, President Biden, that sounds good. But we need a little more outrage, a little more indignation from everyone about this. Especially, sitting here as a person of color whose grandmother sat around the kitchen table with me as a young—fifth-grade education, told me stories about not being allowed to vote, about jelly beans in the jar, how many bubbles in a bar of soap, while the white folks would walk right on in, much like that picture tonight of the white guys all sitting around happy to sign the bill, and the black woman outside is being arrested. We need some indignation, we need outrage. You need some action! It is a Jim Crow relic. And all this talk about the filibuster because it's a political procedure? It was a political procedure for what? To keep black people from having political power, access, and agency, and the proof is in the history of it. The filibuster has a long, disgraceful history of being abused to block civil rights and voting rights bills, despite whatever Mitch McConnell claims this week.
[…]
10:14:50 PM Eastern
LEMON: Now we look back because we have evolved and that's what society does. We look back and we say what the hell were we thinking? And one day we will look back on this with shame and we will think the same thing—but this is worse. The filibuster has been used as a weapon to deny the rights of black Americans for more than a century, and that is the truth. No matter how they try to wrap it in a bow, codify it with law, it's voter suppression. It's the new Jim Crow. And if President Biden – President Biden, if he wants to get anything done, if he wants to pass the voting rights bill, he may have to do something about it. I don't know what he's going to do – not may, he is going to have to do something about it. That’s what it’s going to come down to. Because without that bill, the assault on your vote will continue. The assault on one of your most sacred rights as an American. An elected official, a black woman in Georgia, remember that, arrested knocking on the door of the state capitol that her tax dollars helps to pay for, and yours. She doesn't have the right to know what her elected officials, the governor of her state is doing? She doesn't have a right to witness it, when you’re going to put it on TV, you’re going to tweet it out, and you’re going to have other people in the room with you while you’re signing it? Think about that. It's not that hard to see what's happening here. And as the assault on your vote continues, an angry President Joe Biden says that he finds it despicable and says that he’s going to stop it. I hope he does, I really do. But the question is how? How?
[…]
