Symone Sanders, a former press secretary to presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and a Cable News Network contributor, on Monday's edition of the At This Hour With Berman and Bolduan program attacked and dismissed a supporter of President-Elect Donald Trump who was beaten up by a mob in Chicago on Wednesday because he was white.
Kate Bolduan, co-host of the weekday program with John Berman, first spoke with Sanders, who began the clash by stating: “The audacity of privileged white people to sit on national television and question if hate crimes are happening, to flippantly say 'Stop it; it's not OK,' and not put any actions behind those words is appalling to me.”
“Look,” Trump supporter Carl Higbie responded, “Donald Trump did say 'Stop it!' But I would say: 'Where was Obama when people were smashing neighborhoods after all these riots? He didn't necessarily take a firm stance on getting people to stop.”
Higbie retorted that there was violence on both sides, and that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama hadn’t bothered to denounce the violence at anti-Trump rallies.
He continued: “I think what happens now is look, people should not riot cause violence on either side of the aisle regarding the issue. I think it's stupid for people to come out and say racist things and, you know, whatever.”
Sanders then asserted: “Hate crimes and protesting are not the same things. We cannot normalize this” before slamming Trump for his comments on Sunday that his supporters should stop committing hate crimes in his name, saying he needed to go further.
“That’s not protesting!” Higbie said. “Dragging someone out of their car are beating them is not protesting.”
“I don't think Carl is disputing that, though,” Bolduan stated.
“Well, he should make it very clear because what I heard is: 'Both people on both sides should just cut it all out,' and 'a hate crime is not the same thing as protesting. We have to be very deliberate about that," Sanders asserted.
“What do you say to the people who dragged a poor white guy out of a car and beat him?” Higbie asked.
Sanders replied: “Oh my goodness, poor white people! Please! Oh my -- stop. Stop, Carl!”
She added:
What I say to people that protest is that first of all, apparently there has never been an acceptable form of protest. What I'm saying is I'm calling for people to be peaceful.
I think protesting is a right. It is what this country was founded on. We got this country via protest, actually, but it's never OK to be violent.
“You and I agree on that,” Higbie said.
“But we can't keep calling on people to be peaceful when the rhetoric that has been used has not been peaceful,” Sanders added, “when people don't feel peaceful in their homes.”
Bolduan then remarked that Higbie had been on the program a long time as a Trump supporter. “Do you see what you heard from Donald Trump on 60 Minutes? Do you see him softening or evolving on issues?”
“No,” he replied, “and I'll go specifically into ObamaCare. Look, you can't just dump a billion people or a million people off health insurance.”
He continued: “I mean, you have to do this humanely because, look, ironically, ObamaCare was designed to not be un-implemented, so you have to do it in a smart and intelligent way.”
“You don't want to immediately kick 13 million people off their health insurance plans that they lost in the first place because of ObamaCare,” Higbie concluded.
As an article by Ken Meyer on the Mediaite.com website indicated: “As Donald Trump‘s presidential win sets off major concerns across the country, one of the mogul’s possible supporters was filmed on Wednesday as he was being beaten up by angry men.”
“In footage that was picked up by DNAinfo, a man driving his car in Chicago was attacked at some point by a group of men. A woman was filming the assault while shouting “You voted Trump?” and “Beat his ass.” Another person involved was recorded saying “Don’t vote Trump” and “Steal his stuff.”
As NewsBusters previously reported, all three network shows on Monday promoted the left's eagerness to seize on anything that could explain away Trump’s victory, with the left's latest excuse that false stories being shared on the Facebook website tilted the election in the president-elect’s favor.
On NBC’s Today, correspondent Jo Ling Kent announced: “Facebook now under fire. Critics say it allowed fake news to spread on the platform, potentially reaching millions of people, creating echo chambers and unfairly influencing the presidential election.”
Cllinton's loss couldn't be because she was the “establishment” candidate and Trump was the person promising “change,” could it?
