Charlamagne tha God took no prisoners during an appearance on CNN‘s AC360 on Thursday night, damning the network’s coverage of Donald Trump and overtly fascist statements and tendencies, and the double standards it applies to Kamala Harris in an impassioned bout of truth-telling that left host Anderson Cooper reeling.
In a clip that has gone viral on social media, Charlamagne, a popular podcaster and co-host of the nationally syndicated radio show The Breakfast Club, is asked by Cooper about Trump’s plan to appear on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast and whether Harris planned to do the same.
“I think that she should keep calling Donald Trump a fascist,” Charlamagne replied tersely to the rather inane question.
He continued, “And I think that Americans need to keep looking at the rhetoric of Donald Trump because I don’t know why we’re even thinking about electing somebody who’s talking about putting people in camps. I don’t know why we’re talking, why we want to elect somebody who’s talking about mass deportation. I don’t know why we’re having this conversation about somebody who wants to terminate the constitution to overthrow the results of an election. Aren’t we supposed to be a patriotic country? Whenever somebody like Colin Kaepernick takes a knee in this country, everybody talks about, ‘oh, that’s so unpatriotic.’ But a guy can say he wants to terminate the constitution to overthrow the results of an election and nobody cares?”
Addressing Cooper, Charlamagne, “Now, you brought it back to Kamala and Joe Rogan, Anderson, who gives a damn?”
A clearly shocked Cooper tried to steer the conversation back to why Trump appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast is important in terms of the election, but Charlamagne wasn’t to be cowed. “[We’re talking about whether a] president is a fascist, that’s talking about putting people in camps, that’s talking about, once again, terminating the constitution to overthrow the results of an election. That’s talking about jailing his political opponents. That rhetoric doesn’t scare people?”
Charlamagne was referring to Trump’s repeated incendiary comments and threats against opponents, or the “enemy within” as he describes it, as well as his continued glorification of authoritarians and dictators at rallies and in interviews. John Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff and a former Marine general, said in a New York Times interview that based on his own experience and what he had heard and seen, the former president met the definition of a “fascist.”
Going back to the interview, Cooper tried to claim that CNN did, in fact, cover Trump’s dangerous rhetoric. “I don’t think y’all have enough conversations about it.” Charlamagne replied. “I feel like I heard more on this network about ‘is Kamala Harris Black?’ than I do about Donald Trump being a fascist. Am I wrong?”
“That’s bullshit,” Cooper shot back. “I’m sorry, I’m a huge fan of yours. But to say that we’re sitting around discussing ‘is Kamala Harris Black?’…
“That’s bullshit, Anderson, for you to say that y’all don’t have those conversations,” Charlamagne said.
Cooper then tried his best to explain that perhaps there may have been some “nutty people” who have said things on meaningless CNN panels that have questioned Harris’ ethnicity but overall the network tries to “get people different viewpoints as long as they’re willing to have a legitimate conversation.”
Charlamagne replied, “I think no network has honest about Donald Trump. You haven’t had, nobody has had honest conversations about Donald Trump since 2016. I saw last night they were talking about, you know, the double standard that exists between Donald Trump and the vice president. But it’s always a double standard with Trump, whether it’s with Hillary, whether it’s, you know, against Biden. Now, with Kamala, we talk about [Trump] being a threat to democracy, but we don’t treat him like one.”
In fairness to CNN, there seems to be a belated realization of the double standards applied to coverage Trump and Harris. On Wednesday, after CNN town hall with Harris, Jake Tapper had a sudden moment of clarity on air when he said, “You know, it strikes me, what’s interesting about the moment we are in right now, is that we in the media are treating Vice President Harris like we treat a normal politician, and we’re critiquing her answers, and we’re talking about, ‘Well, she could have said this differently. She could have said that differently.’
“Meanwhile, the Republican nominee literally is talking about liberals being the ‘enemy within,’ talking about using the military to go after these people. His defenders say, ‘oh no, he’s talking about going after illegal immigrants’ or ‘he’s going after mobs in the street’ and Trump will say ‘no, no, no. I mean, going after the Pelosis, going after Adam Schiff, going after Democrats’ and these campaigns are in two different universes.”
English (US) ·