Don Lemon Laughs at Mitch McConnell’s Botched Cleanup of Black Voters Gaffe: ‘That’s Cringe, Right?’
CNN anchor Don Lemon reacted with amusement at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s botched attempt to clean up remarks he made about Black voters earlier this week.
Earlier this week, McConnell faced backlash when he commented at a press conference that “African-American voters are voting at just as high percentage as Americans.”
On Friday night’s edition of CNN’s Don Lemon Tonight, Lemon played some clips of a press scrum during which McConnell tried to clean up those remarks.
Lemon noted that after the initial remarks, “[McConnell’s] office told CNN that he left out the word ‘other’ before Americans. And today, McConnell sought to clarify but got that missing word wrong again.”
“I want to take an opportunity at the outset here to address the outrageous mischaracterization of my history and record on voting rights and race relations, as I inadvertently leaving out the word ‘almost’ in my comments the other day,” McConnel says in one clip, and later had to wander back to add with an awkward laugh “The omitted word is all. Not almost, sorry.”
“As the kids say, cringy, right? Or just cringe,” Lemon said, then introduced CNN analyst Toluse Olorunnipa and asked “That’s cringe, right?”
“Yes, I guess third time is the charm for this, the minority leader,” Olorunnipa said with a smile. “It seems like a Freudian slip, but a lot of people, especially online, said he said what he believes, which is Black people, Black Americans are second class citizens, or maybe not even qualifying as citizens.”
Lemon went on to say that McConnell’s comments were “otherizing African Americans,” and Olorunnipa agreed:
Yes. Black voters for decades have tried to essentially say that, I too, I’m an American. I, too, deserve all of the rights that are given under the Constitution. And that’s been the struggle of the civil rights movement, the struggle of Black Lives Matter movement, and all of the movements that have happened over the past several decades including the push for voting rights, including something that the Biden administration is trying to push for right now but having difficulty getting through, in part, because of the blockade that Senate Minority Leader McConnell and the Republicans have put up towards any kinds of actions to, you know, protect a voter, to expand the Voting Rights Act, to write additional support for people to be able to vote.
One of the things that McConnell said was that, you know, Black voters vote at the same rates as other Americans. And that kind of shades over the fact that it’s a much more difficult for voters of color in many instances in many states to vote.
We’ve seen those long lines, hours long lines that people have had to withstand just to cast their ballot, and we’ve seen how difficult that has been. And you know, there is a push to get new legislation to make it easier to vote, to give people more opportunities to vote, providing for early voting if they maybe making federal election day a holiday.
Because you know, voters of color and minority voters and people who are lower income have sometimes had trouble making it to vote on a day when they’re at work. So, all of those things are things that that Mitch McConnell and his Republican colleagues have blocked, and that’s part of the reason why he’s coming under so much fire for what he says a misstatement that took him quite a while to clarify.
Lemon and Olorunnipa also took on McConnell’s defense of his record on civil rights.
Watch above via CNN.
