CNN’s Don Lemon: White men are ‘biggest terror threat’ to U.S.
Image: CNN
- Lemon was having a conversation about a recent shooting, which appeared to be racially motivated, when he made the remark.
- He’s been criticized by many conservatives on Twitter, some of whom say his comments are hypocritical.
- Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian also addressed a similar topic this week in an interview with Quartz.
CNN anchor Don Lemon said Monday that “the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right,” adding that “there is no travel ban on them.”
Lemon was speaking to fellow CNN host Chris Cuomo on live TV about a white man who shot and killed two black people outside a grocery store in Jeffersontown, KY. The shootings are being investigated as a hate crime, and they occurred during the same week as 13 suspected explosives were sent to prominent Democratic figures and 11 people were murdered in a synagogue in Pittsburgh.
“I keep trying to point out to people and not to demonize any one group or any one ethnicity,” Lemon said. “But we keep thinking that the biggest terror threat is something else, some people who are marching, you know, towards the border, like it’s imminent.”
CNN’s Don Lemon: “We have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them.” pic.twitter.com/OFu9fL3eHn
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) October 31, 2018
"So, we have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them," Lemon said. "There is no travel ban on them. There is no ban on — you know, they had the Muslim ban. There is no white guy ban."
Some conservatives criticized Lemon's comments on Twitter, noting the apparent hypocrisy of calling for people to stop demonizing other groups and then immediately saying white men are the biggest terror threat to the U.S.
Uhhhhhhh ... CNN's Lemon: Stop Demonizing People, Also White Men Are Terrorists https://t.co/AuYTgnyuzL
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) October 31, 2018I could hardly believe he actually said that, but the video shows he certainly did. Remarkable. https://t.co/6x6YMoDVkV
— Brit Hume (@brithume) October 31, 2018We have to stop demonizing people based on race or ethnicity and also white men are terrorists. This is CNN. https://t.co/fFhWm6jr5q
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 31, 2018.@donlemon is a racist. https://t.co/WbZ8AX2pVH
— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) October 31, 2018
