‘All-New Low’: Don Lemon Slams Trump for Making US Troops ‘Pawns’ in Defense Budget Fight Because ‘He Thinks He’s Being Censored on Twitter’
CNN’s Don Lemon called out President Donald Trump for his threat to veto the massive defense budget bill — and threaten a scheduled pay raise for US military servicemembers — because he wants Congress to take action on an unrelated policy about social media legal immunity.
On Tuesday night, Trump had publicly warned that he would not sign the roughly $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that Congress has passed, obliquely citing his desire to revoke Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Then, on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany reiterated that “the president is serious” about his threat to block the bipartisan bill.
Trump has repeatedly railed against that provision of the communications law, claiming that it unfairly shields social media giants like Twitter and Facebook when they flag and then apply misinformation labels to posts of his that contain false or disputed claims. In fact, Section 230 protects Internet companies from being sued, which affords them a much greater latitude to host controversial content from users. Were that rule to ever be repealed, Trump’s social media accounts would almost certainly be shut down because of the possible legal risk Twitter and Facebook would face because of his many incendiary and untrue comments.
Lemon zeroed in on the unfair position Trump was putting US servicemembers in as part of his personal vendetta against Twitter and Facebook’s mild fact-checking of his online rhetoric.
“With 50 days left to go before Inauguration Day and the end of Trump’s term, the question is how much power he’ll have over his party, a party that so far, anyway, is mostly still in lock step with the defeated lame duck,” the CNN host asked.
“He is sinking to what may be a new low, an all-new low, using our troops as pawns because, of all things, he thinks he is being censored on Twitter,” a clearly disgusted Lemon said. “Threatening to veto funding for the military unless Congress removes legal protection for social media companies. He’s holding up a bill that would give troops a raise just because he’s mad at Twitter. Stunning. Stunning for the Commander-in-Chief, but it’s part and parcel of this president’s disrespect for the military.”
He then ran through a lowlights reel of Trump disrespecting active duty military, veterans and military next of kin. Among them, insulting former Vietnam War POW Sen. John McCain, dismissing Khizr and Ghazala Khan, Gold Star parents who spoke out against Trump at the 2015 Democratic convention, failing to remember the name of a solider killed in Africa in a phone call to his widow, and brushing off the brain injuries of soldiers wounded after Iran retaliated for the US assassination of Qassem Soleimani with a missile attack on US bases in Iraq.
“Commander in chief right there,” Lemon said, a mixture of sadness and sarcasm in his voice. “Downplaying servicemembers’ injuries. Like I said at the beginning, the very beginning, we have got to decide what kind of country we want to live in.”
Watch the video above, via CNN.
