CNN's Piers Morgan claimed on Wednesday that "elements" of the Tea Party are "racist" in an interview with GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain. "You all know there are elements of the Tea Party who are racist," he insisted to Cain.
Morgan again stated it as a matter of fact, in his question to Cain: "How do you deal with that element in the Tea Party that is overtly racist?"
The CNN host also cited black liberals Harry Belafonte and Morgan Freeman as bona-fide experts about the matter, and pressed Cain to respond to them and other "leading black Americans" who think the movement is racist. [Video below the break.]
Just how "liberal" is activist Harry Belafonte? He ripped President Bush back in 2006 as the "greatest terrorist in the world" and praised Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. He also slammed Herman Cain the other week as someone "so denied intelligence" and damningly added "I don't think prayers were created for him."
Actor Morgan Freeman recently condemned the Tea Party as racist for trying to unseat President Obama in 2012 instead of working with him.
"Look at, look, the Tea Partiers, who are controlling the Republican Party....Their stated policy, publicly stated, is to do whatever it takes to see to it that Obama only serves one term," he told Piers Morgan on September 23, adding that "It is a racist thing."
And yet Morgan cited him, along with Belafonte, as a credible source for what he had to say of the Tea Party.
A transcript of the segment, which aired on October 19 at 9:16 p.m. EDT, is as follows:
And I know that your fairly humorous response is to say, I looked in the mirror and I appear to be a black man, and I'm in the Tea Party, which I get and you're perfectly entitled to say that. But you all know there are elements of the Tea Party who are racist. I mean (Unintelligible) it's a trade secret. How do you deal with that as a black man who is now leading the Tea Party charge? How do you deal with that element in the Tea Party that is overtly racist?
HERMAN CAIN, GOP presidential candidate: Let me say that my experience has been, there is no more a racist element in the Tea Party than there is in the general population at large. It isn't. It is not – if there is – it's not. This is the biggest mis-perception. I spoke at the first Tea Party event that I ever spoke at, April 15th, 2009. I have spoken at hundreds of Tea Parties. It's not a racist organization.
MORGAN: What do you say to Morgan Freeman, to Harry Belafonte, to others who've been quite vocal about this?
CAIN: I say, go to a Tea Party. I doubt if they've ever been.
MORGAN: I don't think they want to go.
(Laughter)
CAIN: I'll go with them and provide some ground cover for them if they think it's a racist organization.
