CNN hosts Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo clashed over how to interview White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, following a contentious segment on the network.
"It feels beneath the dignity of this network," Lemon told this fellow CNN host after Conway appeared on the show yesterday evening. The counselor loudly deflected questioning over the claim that president Trump had threatened violence in a Breitbart News interview.
"She never answers a question. She berates you. She is condescending. She uses our network to give her talking points," Lemon told Cuomo roughly an hour after the interview.
"For me, it feels beneath the dignity of this network to have someone on who just constantly lies and misconstrues things. I feel like having someone on like that is giving them a platform that they have not earned," Lemon continued.
The debate was not exactly heated. While Cuomo said he took a slightly different approach to talking with Trump administration officials, he largely agreed with Lemon.
"If I held that standard, I would have very few people on the show," Cuomo said, adding, "If you are going to limit who you have on the show to the people who only answer the questions and are truthful, then you are going to be alone a lot of the time.
"[Trump] knows there's an open invitation on the show. He knows I have offered all the time we have to offer, on topics that are mutually agreed. He doesn't want to take the opportunity, I understand that—that is his choice. If this is who he wants to come on, I want my audience to see what he believes the best defense to be. I get the frustration; it's frustrating for me too."
The president's comments were made to the right-wing news publication in the Oval Office. He was discussing the differences between opposing political ideologies.
Trump told Breitbart News: "I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people, but they don't play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad."
Yesterday, as reported at the time, MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes suggested on Twitter that Trump's stance could be perceived as a "threat of fascist violence by the president."
Conway appeared on CNN yesterday to react to the comment. She claimed that Trump had been talking about how "peaceful and gentle many people are who are otherwise tough."
Shouting at the host, Conway skirted the subject. "You should pick better things to cover," she said.
Giving his own views on the interview techniques, Lemon said, "This is about facts versus alternative facts. I just feel like we do a disservice when we try to give false equivalence to someone who is clearly obfuscating and clearly has an agenda to mislead people. I think that as journalists we should call them out."
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Jason Murdock is a staff reporter for Newsweek.
Based in London, Murdock previously covered cybersecurity for the International Business Times UK ... Read more
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