On Wednesday's New Day show on CNN, during a discussion of President Donald Trump pressuring NFL players to stand for the National Anthem, hosts Alisyn Camerota and John Berman suggested an equivalence between refusing to stand for the Anthem and simply being unable to sing all the words of every prominent patriotic song.
Appearing later in the show as a guest, White House advisor Kellyanne Conway called out the "snark and bark" of the CNN hosts.
Shortly before 8:00 a.m. Eastern, Camerota brought up President Trump only singing along with a small portion of 'God Bless America' as she introduced a clip of the President trying to sing: "Another moment that we should play for you was during the celebration, 'God Bless America' was played, and President Trump didn't seem to know the words." She added: "It's a visually striking moment."
After a clip of Trump only singing a limited number of words from the song which CNN analyst Maggie Haberman described as "the lyrics that almost everyone knows," Haberman commented:
I don't think that the President is somebody who ever bathed himself in patriotism before he became -- in terms of just, you know, songs, anthems, and so forth, and lyrics, before he took the presidency, but it is still striking the degree to which he still doesn't know some of these things.
After Camerota remarked that "every third grader or second grader is taught this," she then cracked: "Are you sure that the President was born here in this country? Have you seen evidence of that? Have you seen evidence -- because it would be very hard to be born here and not know how to sing along with that?"
Berman then suggested that congressional Republicans and Fox News Channel would be railing against President Barack Obama if he had failed to know the words to "God Bless America" as the CNN host injected: "Had President Obama not sung along to all the words of 'God Bless America,' there would be hearings practically on Congress. If not hearings, there would be another cable news network that would be going nearly 24 hours a day on it."
CNN has typically tried to gloss over the fact that the original NFL kneeler -- Colin Kaepernick - first began his protests by simply remaining seated during the Anthem, and, as previously documented by NewsBusters, made anti-America statements and wore anti-police socks depicting cops as pigs at about the time he began his protests. So the NFL kneeling protests were born largely out of anti-America sentiments.
A bit past 8:30 a.m., as Berman interviewed Conway, he pressed his guest on the issue of whether Trump knows patriotic songs well enough to be justified in complaining about whether NFL players stand for the National Anthem. Berman:
He has decided what he thinks is patriotic, and there are people who have looked at him yesterday not singing along with "God Bless America," and that may seem trite, but there are others who say, "Look, maybe it's not patriotic enough if you don't sing all the words to 'God Bless America.'"
Referring to the words "Trump Stumbles Through 'God Bless America'" appearing on screen during the earlier discussion, Conway took a shot at the CNN hosts for making an issue of the President's singing:
I saw your earlier segment, and I think it's a little bit, well, speaking of unseemly, you didn't need to write that segment -- that chyron the way you did, but you like to. There's a lot of snark and bark coming toward us at this White House. It's unfortunate, but if it's the only time today that 'God' and 'America' are in a chyron on CNN, I guess we'll take it.
