CNN weekend anchor Jim Acosta continues to display the liberal network's double standards in treatment of guests by debating conservatives but just giving liberals a platform to promote their agenda.
This past Sunday, Abene Clayton of the leftist British newspaper The Guardian was not challenged as she accused Fox News of making white Americans trigger happy, and predicted that red states loosening their gun laws will cause more shootings.
By contrast, on just the day before, Acosta tried to undermine the pro-gun views of Congressman Tim Burchett as the Tennessee Republican promoted the arming of school personnel to help deter shootings. Burchett trolled Acosta a bit by noting CNN studios have armed guards.
As Acosta and Clayton spoke about the surge in murders that happened in 2020, the liberal contributor linked it to the pandemic (even though other countries did not experience a crime surge after the pandemic started.) After the CNN host suggested that people getting afraid and buying more guns was making the violence worse, Clayton implicated Fox.
Referring to the tragic shooting of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl after he went to the wrong address, Clayton recalled:
And we also see that same mentality especially amongst older, more conservative white folks when it comes to black youth, you know. They see the images, and his grandson said as much, you know, they see the images on Fox News of young black men and young black teens doing all sorts of stuff, and assume that they're going to be victimized by that person.
Her indictment of specifically of whites ignores FBI data that whites are generally less likely to commit violent crimes across racial lines.
Acosta followed up by fretting over pro-gun laws enacted in red states:
You know, Abene, more states are adopting so-called constitutional carry laws, meaning most people can carry a concealed weapon without a permit. I mean, that's law in about, what, half -- more than half the states in this country. I mean, is it reasonable to think that we will see even more crimes of passion -- these sort of "shoot first, ask questions later" sorts of crimes as a result of all of this immediate access to a firearm?
As usual, the recent media hyping of police-related violence was not implicated in recent crime increases even though a similar crime surge happened in 2015 and 2016 due to the Ferguson effect. And, even though the number of criminals kept in prison has also decreased by 25 percent from 1.6 million in 2011 to 1.2 million in 2021, coinciding with the increases in crime from the past decade, this undermining of the criminal justice system by Democrats was not mentioned.
By contrast, it was just the day before when Acosta challenged Congressman Burchett to pass new gun laws in Congress, but then tried to dismiss the Republican's push for armed guards in schools.
Also in recent months, Acosta has provided a sympathetic forum to liberal anti-gun activists Fred Guttenberg and Manuel Oliver for them to rail against Republicans.
These double standards by CNN were sponsored in part by Hello Fresh. Their contact information is linked.
Transcripts follow:
CNN Newsroom
April 29, 2023
7:35 p.m. Eastern
JIM ACOSTA: Getting back to when you were saying, "Washington is not going to fix this," a lot of people listen at home to that, and, I mean, you like to speak, you know, plain English to folks. A lot of people listened to what you just said and said, "Wait a minute, it is your job to fix this, and it's unacceptable to have mass shooting after mass shooting after mass shooting." Why not fix this? Get together -- get together with the Democrats and get it done?
CONGRESSMAN TIM BURCHETT (R-TN): Well, this happens a lot, Jim. That was cut off a little bit. I was speaking more from a Christian perspective. I also went on and said we need real revival in this country. I feel like we've turned from the Lord, and I know maybe that makes people's heads spin off sometimes when they hear somebody like me say that, but it's just --
ACOSTA: But there's Christianity in other countries, and they don't have mass shootings.
BURCHETT: Well, they don't have our freedom either, and they don't have a Second Amendment that -- and also, you want -- what happens is you'll take away the --
ACOSTA: But what about that point that you should be the ones to fix it? To say, "Well, we're not going to fix anything here in Washington," that's your job.
BURCHETT: Okay, she broke over 20 laws -- what law are you going to do? You know, now you have people that can print guns, you know. Timothy McVeigh, 150 pounds of fertilizer and diesel fuel -- he killed over 100 people, a bunch of innocent folks. And we've got evil in this world -- we've got to address it. We know we had a bill last year -- Marsha Blackburn had it in the Senate, and we had it over in the House that would have put guards in our schools, and it was blocked. The President said, "I want the guns -- we're not going to do this." And we weren't even allowed a hearing on it in the state -- in the House of Representatives -- in the people's House. Now, why wouldn't you want to put more people and secure -- and, you know, you enjoy that at CNN. You enjoy the fact that you can't walk into the headquarters of CNN -- there's an armed guard out front.
ACOSTA: But you can't put an -- you can't put an armed guard at a house -- I don't want to get into a back and forth with you, sir, but you couldn't put an armed guard at the house last night in Texas where the guy because he didn't want to stop shooting his guns -- went over and executed half the people in the house -- executed five people, including an eight-year-old child. There's no armed guard there.
BURCHETT: Tell me -- I don't know the situation there, but tell me how you get the guns back. How do you get them out? What are you going to do? There are just so many guns out there. I just think that we've got a mental health issue in this country. We ought to address that as well. And, you know, these red flag laws, some say they work -- some say they don't. I'd like to see some real numbers on that. We had a -- remember, we had an assault weapons ban in this country, and the Justice Department came back and said it's not reducing shootings at all. And so they did away with it.
ACOSTA: Well, there were some studies that said that it did reduce -- there were some studies that said it did reduce mass shootings, but, Congressman, I'm short on time. Let's have you back sometime, and let's talk about this some more.
(...)
CNN Newsroom
April 30, 2023
6:07 p.m. Eastern
ABENE CLAYTON, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Over the past couple of years, seeing these most recent incidents really takes me back to the beginning of the pandemic in mid-2020 when we started to see more neighbors getting into arguments that end up shootings, freeway shootings, you know, road rage that ends fatally. So I think we're seeing a continuation of a lot of fear, paranoia, unaddressed mental health challenges, all combined with what we see as ever-growing access to firearms.
JIM ACOSTA: And, Abene, is this also a bit self-perpetuating in that these high-profile shootings make people fearful, then they go buy guns, and then the anxiety can lead to some, you know, kind of a fear-driven response to a perceived threat? Or is that just overanalyzing things? I mean, what do you think?
CLAYTON: Yeah. No, I don't think you're overanalyzing at all. When I think about what happened to the 16-year-old who went to the wrong door, I think that was such a clear example of already paranoia, fear, this idea that, after a high-profile mass shooting, people say, "I'm not going to be a victim -- if someone, you know, comes into the supermarket I'm in -- if someone is at the mall where my family is, I'm going to be ready."
And we also see that same mentality especially amongst older, more conservative white folks when it comes to black youth, you know. They see the images, and his grandson said as much, you know, they see the images on Fox News of young black men and young black teens doing all sorts of stuff, and assume that they're going to be victimized by that person.
So I think that you are spot on, and it's not an over-analysis of these things, but it also is unfortunate that we don't have enough expert voices -- enough psychologists and people who can really tell us what really leads to these things so we know exactly how to approach them with solutions.
ACOSTA: You know, Abene, more states are adopting so-called constitutional carry laws, meaning most people can carry a concealed weapon without a permit. I mean, that's law in about, what, half -- more than half the states in this country. I mean, is it reasonable to think that we will see even more crimes of passion -- these sort of "shoot first, ask questions later" sorts of crimes as a result of all of this immediate access to a firearm?
CLAYTON: I think, in addition to the access to a firearm, we're also seeing a destabilization of mental health resources, things that can prevent youth from getting involved in crime in the first place and keep guns out of their hands, so I think in addition to, you know, the fact that more states in the U.S. have constitutional carry than have red flag laws or some sort of infrastructure to get guns away from people who are deemed to be a danger to themselves, really puts us in a really bad position. I certainly can't predict the future, but there's no way, you know -- one plus one equals two.
If we have more guns and less resources for people's mental health, less support for law enforcement who are also afraid, you know, of all of of the guns around, then I am just incredibly worried that we will see more of this violence that is triggered by, like you said, everyday interactions -- general frustrations, anger and fear that people feel but don't have to turn into irreparable harm. And I think that access to firearms certainly has a role to play that we need to think about and have a more honest conversation about.
