CNN anchor Don Lemon expressed his thoughts on what was behind President Donald Trump‘s recent actions at the southern border.
The conversation began when Stephen Colbert said that a “theme” with the Trump administration is using race “as a tool to divide people,” citing candidate Trump’s rhetoric about some illegal immigrants being “rapists,” the president’s “both sides” remarks after Charlottesville, and most recently his “zero tolerance” policy that separated undocumented families at the southern border as examples.
“It has everything to do with race,” Don Lemon responded. “We were told or people would have you to believe that this was about economic anxiety. Every single study and survey shows that this was about people who are losing power and losing influence. It was about race, It was about not having the same level of influences they had and they were concerned about-”
“They’re losing their privilege,” Colbert chimed in.
“Losing their privilege. And that’s what this is about, ” Lemon continued. “And so I think that as a country- what is interesting about this administration, I think that it is offering us the opportunity to figure out who we’re going to be. And are we going to be people who- the people who shut people out and put them in cages and put them in camps and separate them from their children? Or are we going to be a nation that welcomes people in, with rules, of course, and be the America that we’re supposed to be, the ‘shining city on a hill’ with the golden door and the Statue of Liberty?”
Colbert expressed that since we’re “going to be truly a multicultural society in the next 30 years” because white people aren’t reproducing enough that the immigration policy was supposed to act as “sandbags against a tide that’s coming.”
“So when you are used to sort of having your way and the world reflecting who you are and what you want, when the playing field is being leveled, it can feel like discrimination,” Lemon told Colbert. ” For straight people, gay right. They’re having to deal with gay rights. For religious people, they’re having to deal with religious pluralism. So you may think your right are being taken away when really the playing field is being leveled and the country is just evolving. We’re going to be a minority majority country very soon and some people don’t want to deal with that and see the change.”
Watch the clip above, via CBS.
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