Well, that didn’t take long. The extraordinary display of bigotry and contempt for Trump voters presented by CNN’s Don Lemon and two guests — New York Times columnist Wajahat Ali and Republican ex-strategist Rick Wilson — aired Saturday night and went viral on social media with one video garnering more than 10 million views, and counting. And now it has been made into a very effective political ad by the GOP.
During the segment, Mr. Wilson began to mock and dismiss President Trump and his supporters as illiterate “credulous boomer rubes,” who were too dumb to understand maps or much of anything else. At one point, Mr. Wilson affected what was supposed to be a Southern accent in a disgusting effort to further belittle conservative voters as idiots.
Fox News reported, “As Lemon began crying with tears of laughter, Wilson went on to depict what he thought a typical Trump supporter sounded like. ‘Donald Trump’s the smart one, and y’all elitists are dumb!’ Wilson said with a heavy Southern accent. ‘You elitists with your geography and your maps and your spelling!’ Mr. Ali chimed in during the mockery. ‘Your math and your reading!’ Mr. Wilson added. ‘All those lines on the map!’"
We are quite familiar with the contempt and hatred the establishment holds for the average American. It’s one of the many reasons Mr. Trump was elected president. Yet it remains jarring to see such smug and comfortable arrogance on public display; importantly, however, it reminds us how deeply rooted this hatred and contempt really is.
The immediate reactions on social media were swift and clear. For example, Steve Krakauer, formerly of CNN and now of The Blaze, tweeted: “The arrogance, the dismissiveness, the smug cackling, the accents. If Donald Trump wins re-election this year, I’ll remember this brief CNN segment late one Saturday night in January as the perfect encapsulation for why it happened.”
Ivanka Trump, daughter and adviser to the president, responded: “You consistently make fun of half the country and then complain that it is divided. The arrogance, mocking accents and smug ridicule of this nation’s ‘Real Elites’ is disgusting.”
Watch: http://namtranganh.blogspot.com/2020/01/don-lemon-received-intense-backlash-for.html
Many predicted the segment would be turned into an ad for the GOP and Mr. Trump, and indeed it has. The ad intersperses the CNN panel ridicule and the now-infamous 2016 Hillary Clinton comment labeling Trump supporters “deplorables,” along with a variety of Democratic presidential candidates and media figures calling Trump supporters racist and dumb. It ends with Don Lemon laughing hysterically as his guests mock and insult the tens of millions of Americans who happen to disagree with them politically.
The ad ends with what may be the most effective call to action against the Democratic Party and its legacy media cohorts: “They think you’re a joke. Prove them wrong in November.”