CNN’s Don Lemon Torches Republican Leadership Over Herschel Walker: ‘Speaks to What They Think of Black People’
CNN anchor Don Lemon torched Republican leadership over the candidacy of Herschel Walker, saying it showed they believe Black voters will vote for an unacceptable candidate “just because he’s Black.”
On Wednesday morning’s edition of CNN This Morning, Lemon and his political panel talked about the implications of Walker’s loss to Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia’s Senate runoff.
Lemon floated the idea that the Walker candidacy shows “what the Republican leadership or establishment think of Black people because they think that they can put someone like Herschel Walker in there and that Black folks are going to go out and vote for him just because he’s Black.”
CNN analyst and ex-Trump adviser David Urban pushed back, but Lemon and S.E. Cupp pointed out that once selected, Walker enjoyed support from leadership:
ERROL LOUIS: Anybody who’s going to run for office has to take into account that, you know, Donald Trump wasn’t entirely crazy in saying, hey, Herschel Walker could probably win this seat even even though he’s utterly unqualified for the job.
DON LEMON: I got to ask this question. I know we got to go, but does it speak to what the Republican leadership or establishment think of Black people because they think that they can put someone like Herschel Walker in there and that Black folks are going to go out and vote for him just because he’s Black.
DAVID URBAN: So I saw this pastor on on social media giving kind of a sermon, this church. Don’t forget, this isn’t a model, the party. There’s no, like giant smoke-filled room where the party got together and said, you know, chomping on cigars and going Herschel’s our guy.
DON LEMON: This is Trump saying…
DAVID URBAN: One guy, right? One guy said, this is our guy. Right. So it isn’t some giant, you know, decision by the elders in the party that Herschel Walker is the candidate.
DON LEMON: But then you have him flanked by the elders in the party.
DAVID URBAN: They’re outflanked. There’s nowhere Trump has them flanked, right, because there’s nowhere to turn for those folks.
SE CUPP: But this is why leadership is so important, because if you had a strong Republican leadership that was willing to say to Donald Trump, this candidate is crap and we’re not going to win with this candidate, then you might have had some different outcomes.
DAVID URBAN: That’s fine.
DON LEMON: She’s making the point that the question she’s answering the question that I asked you, that is what the Republican establishment thinks of Black people.
DAVID URBAN: No, no, I don’t think that’s true.
ERROL LOUIS: It’s what they think of ethnic voting. Right. There are some who look at it and say, well, Black candidates seem to really draw out a lot of Black voters. So let’s get a Black candidate.
DON LEMON: I agree with you, but that’s because it’s Black people. It was a Latino. It would be the same thing. You understand what I’m saying?
DAVID URBAN: Yeah, I’d push back on that. I don’t think that there’s. Listen, this is one person’s candidate, right? Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell said, hey, look, candidate quality matters. Herschel’s not a great candidate. We should do better. Right. I think a lot of people tend to point if they looked across the state of Georgia, they’d have picked it. You know, you could have gone out and recruited a whole lot of different folks that would have done a lot better than Herschel. And he could have you could have picked a, you know, a woman African-American, going to be a lot of candidates are really.
SE CUPP: Or just someone qualified?
DAVID URBAN: You know. But I’m saying that were qualified, right? You could if that’s what you’re looking for, you could have picked somebody, right? If that’s…
DON LEMON: Werewolves and vampires, that’s where we are. Thank you all. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Watch above via CNN This Morning.
