CNN's Hill Equates Left-Wing Rioters to Right Wing, Struggles for Examples

February 2nd, 2017 11:07 PM

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's CNN Newsroom, guest hosted by Pamela Brown, to discuss violent riots by left-wing protesters at UC Berkeley, far-left CNN political commentator and Morehouse College professor Marc Lamont Hill tried to claim that there have similarly been riots by right-wingers on college campuses, but repeatedly failed to come up with any examples when fellow guest Ben Ferguson kept pressing him.

At 3:34 p.m. ET, after conservative CNN commentator Ferguson pointed out that such violent protest is a phenomenon of the far left that the far right just does not do, Hill struggled to make a comeback argument. The Morehouse professor declared: "I think it's also a bit inaccurate to say this is a problem purely of the left. I think we have intolerance on the left and on the right. I mean, I travel the college speaking circuit all the time, and the Right boycotts, the Right writes letters, the Right tells people not to let me in."

Ferguson jumped back in and challenged him: "Do they pepper spray people that want to come to your events? Do they set things on fire? Do they destroy property? Do they flip over barricades? Tell me the last time a bunch of conservatives went to a college campus and acted this way because I would love to see the proof behind that."

Hill initially tried to cite lone-wolf terrorist attacks as examples of right-wing activists turning violent: "Well, you know, they don't always go to college campuses. Sometimes they blow up abortion clinics. Sometimes they burn down mosques. Sometimes they shoot up churches."

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After Ferguson injected, "That's not what we're talking about. Now, you're stretching," Hill vaguely made a claim of right-wing rioters on college campuses as he added: "No, no. I'm not stretching. I'm just trying to finish my point. What I'm saying is that both sides have extremists and respond to disagreement violently. No, it's not necessarily on a college campus -- sometimes it is -- and there have been right-wing riots on college campuses as well. But the point is that both sides do it."

The conservative commentator asked, "Where?" as Hill continued: "I'm not saying -- I'm not defending -- I'm not -- let me finish, Ben -- I'm not defending the behavior, I'm saying let's not pretend that only the left has violent forms of disagreement. That's simply inaccurate. And I think what's even more troubling-"

Ferguson asked for an example again: "But, Marc, where -- tell me one example of where conservatives on a campus have done that. One example?"

The liberal Morehouse professor never did come up with an example as he then switched topics:

Ben, I'm not trying to avoid your question, it's just you keep interrupting, so I'm going to get to my other point. So the other thing I think here that I find troublesome is that Donald Trump is blaming this on the university and threatening to cut federal funds, as if the institution is behind this. In fact, the institution has spoken out against it.