CNN’s Don Lemon Tears into ‘Smug,’ ‘Mean’ MSNBC over Romney Grandson Segment

CNN anchor Don Lemon had some tough words for his competitors at MSNBC Monday night during a discussion about Melissa Harris-Perry and her panel poking fun at a crowded Mitt Romney family photo with his young black grandson. Lemon used the opportunity to vent about the liberal network, calling it “smug” and unwilling to entertain actual diversity of opinion.

Republican Ana Navarro agreed with Lemon that it was in bad taste to use the child to mock the Romneys, but Marc Lamont Hill argued that they didn’t actually make fun of the baby itself, just used it to make a point about diversity in the Romney family and the GOP.

Lemon wondered if Hill would react the same way if the same segment aired on Fox. Navarro predicted, “By now, Jesse Jackson would be protesting and tied to a tree somewhere.”

Lemon then took on the “crowd” at MSNBC that’s given him lots of flak for comments he’s made on issues of race specifically. Lemon explained he’s never bothered responding

because “dogs are supposed to howl at the moon, the moon doesn’t howl back.” He called MSNBC a “smug” club where despite touting diversity, there is “no diversity of opinion” on the network.

Hill agreed that “pockets” of MSNBC are “smug and condescending,” but Lemon continued on to dismiss the network as an insular den of liberalism where people are “saying mean, smug things about people who… may disagree with them.”

Watch the video below, via CNN:

[photo via screengrab]

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