‘It’s Scary’: Morning Joe Warns Don Lemon’s Arrest Is What Happens in Authoritarian Countries

Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski and Jonathan Lemire covered the arrest of former CNN host Don Lemon on Friday, with the panel warning it could be a “scary” first step to larger attacks on press freedom.

Brzezinski and Lemire, along with Molly Jong-Fast and Lisa Rubin, covered Lemon’s lawyer announcing he was arrested on Thursday evening over a St. Paul, Minnesota church protest against ICE. Lemon has maintained that he was simply covering the protest as a journalist and was not a participant. The DOJ previously announced the arrest of multiple activists involved in storming the church during a Sunday service.

Lemon had previously predicted the DOJ would pursue him and likely charge him.

“If there’s no law to fit, they will try to fit or retrofit something or go around a judge and just do it themselves. And it doesn’t matter and everything that they say pertains to protesters. I was not a protester,” Lemon told Scripps News.

Lemire noted that the Lemon arrest comes days after the FBI raided the home of a Washington Post reporter this month and seized her devices over alleged classified reports.

“On a national security matter. Computers took devices, took computers. And the post was assured that the reporter herself was not a target of the investigation. It was one of her sources, but that was seen as a real crackdown on the freedom of the press,” Lemire said.

MS NOW senior political reporter Rubin predicted Lemon may be a first step in the administration targeting journalists more aggressively.

She argued:

If your aim is to go after journalists for exercising their First Amendment rights, the rights that all four of us really cherish and our network cherishes, Don Lemon does not have the protection of a network behind him. He does not work for a major corporation like Versant or any of the other major networks, or any of the major print publications. He is lacking that infrastructure and support right now, which makes him a very convenient and easy first target for a Department of Justice that wants to put journalists in fear of doing our job.

Jong-Fast added that the Lemon arrest feels like something out of authoritarian countries.

“Think about the countries where journalists are targeted by the federal government, by their governments, Russia, China, Turkey, they’re not democracies,” she said. “I mean, this kind of thing, it’s a shot across the bow right towards the free press. And it’s scary.”

Watch above via MS NOW.

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