Roland Martin Calls Out Dan Abrams After Fiery NewsNation Segment on Policing

Jackson RichmanMar 4th, 2022, 1:46 pm
 

Political commentator and television host Roland Martin called out NewsNation host Dan Abrams over a segment on Abrams’ NewsNation show in which the pair debated policing in America.

Abrams — who is also the founder of Mediaite — invited Martin on his show Dan Abrams Live to discuss the state of the “defund the police” movement in the wake of President Joe Biden calling for the police to be funded during his State of the Union address this week.

Abrams brought up several tweets from recent weeks in which Martin, the host of Roland Martin Unfiltered, said “Every cop should be fired” in response to a Black transgender woman, Ju’Zema Goldring, being awarded $1.5 million by a jury after being wrongfully arrested for jaywalking and drug possession.

Another tweet cited was of Martin saying “Every cop should be prosecuted for murder,” which was in response to an Al Jazeera+ story about the killing of Amir Locke by the Minneapolis Police Department.

Abrams asked Martin about the tweets during their NewsNation interview. When airing the tweets, however, only Martin’s comments were shown, and not the stories he was responding to.

Martin was unable to see the specific tweets cited on air, as he had no monitor in his remote studio, and seemed not to recall the context of the comments. Martin asked Abrams for the context of the tweets he was responding to, asking “in response to what?”

Abrams replied: “It’s not a response, it’s your tweet, it was an original tweet, it wasn’t a response to somebody else.” While the tweet was not a response to someone else, Abrams seemed unaware that Martin’s commentary came as quote tweets of specific reports.

Following the show, Martin tweeted screenshots of his tweet and what was shown on air. He called for Abrams to apologize, saying his tweets were taken out of context.

In response, Abrams argued the meaning of his and Martin’s comments remained the same.

“Roland, how does a tweet that says ‘every cop should be fired’ or ‘every cop should be prosecuted’ on top of a story change the context? You didn’t say all ‘these’ cops should be fired. You were trying to make a point by being provocative and you succeeded.”

“But I’ll admit I figured you would know your own tweets and I didn’t have the exact date etc handy. It wasn’t intended as a setup so come back and set the record straight,” Abrams added.

Mediaite reached out to Abrams for further comment.

“If Roland didn’t mean ‘every cop should be fired’ he can say that,” Abrams said. “Of course I wish I had had the actual tweets in hand during the segment and then would have responded to him that his words were on top of a linked story about police misconduct. But those words were quoted accurately and still seem unambiguous and much broader than about a single story. But I am always open to criticism and Roland can certainly come back on the show to do so.”

Watch above, via NewsNation.

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