CNN’s Don Lemon accused President Trump of fostering an environment that led to George Floyd’s death.
Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, died after footage of an officer in Minneapolis putting his knee on the back of Floyd’s neck circulated heavily online this week. Protests have broken out in Minneapolis and Los Angeles, among other areas, over the incident with Black Lives Matter demonstrators present.
Lemon ran a segment on the matter Wednesday night.
“How many more excuses do you need to make before you examine yourself and say, ‘OK, maybe I need to wake up a little bit and take a good long look at what I’ve been doing. Maybe I need to understand or realize that the environment that this president has trafficked in can help to lead to these sorts of situations, where people think that that sort of behavior, meaning the people who are doing these things, the people who are calling the cops on people falsely in Central Park?'” he said.
CNN’s @DonLemon: “It’s not incumbent on black people to stop racism.”
After the death of George Floyd sparked outrage across the country, CNN’s Don Lemon speaks frankly to @ChrisCuomo about the realities for people of color living in America. https://t.co/s7orve50PP pic.twitter.com/tFbBacYMuZ
— CNN Tonight (@CNNTonight) May 28, 2020
“I’m not condoning people protesting … So, they are frustrated, and they are angry, and they are out there. And they’re upset. You shouldn’t be taking televisions, but I can’t tell people how to react to this,” he said.
Lemon was then joined by CNN coworker Chris Cuomo, who also weighed in on the incident.
“That’s the meme that’s going around right now with the cops with the black kid on the ground saying hello to the white guy in camo with the AK-47 and the mask who is protesting in Michigan,” said Cuomo. “That when it’s white people with guns and they’re out and they’re angry and they’re in their faces with cops, everybody’s civil.”
He then argued, “If you started to have African Americans buying up AR-15s … and going out and protesting legally with legal weapons, you’d see a change in the laws, and that’s sad.”
