In an attempt to defend President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress, NRATV contributor Bill Whittle called CNN’s Don Lemon a “malignant” and “miserable racist” after Lemon noted that the president sounds different when he is using a teleprompter, as compared to speaking without one.
During the March 2 edition of NRATV’s Stinchfield, host Grant Stinchfield played a clip of Lemon saying Trump's speech sounded like it was written by a college student “trying to use big words” to impress the audience. Stinchfield called Lemon’s comments “nonsense” and “offensive,” while Whittle claimed Lemon was trying to prove how much smarter he is than “Donald Trump and the idiots who voted for him.”
Whittle claimed that Lemon said you can tell when Trump is using a teleprompter, but couldn’t when former president Barack Obama gave speeches. Whittle called this a “flagrant lie” and went on to mock Obama’s manner of speaking. He claimed the only reason Lemon made that observation is that he’s a “miserable racist” who thinks “white people aren’t smart enough to understand big words that black guys like” he and Obama can:
[BEGIN VIDEO]
DON LEMON (CLIP): It sounded to me -- I thought it was -- he sounded very presidential. This was a speech written by a college student for someone else trying to use big words to impress that the person who is reciting it did not know the meaning of the words.
[END VIDEO]
GRANT STINCHFIELD (HOST): What kind of nonsense is that? You know, and in fact it's offensive to hear him say something like that. Because he even started his comment with, “It was a good speech and it sounded presidential.” Yet he figured, oh no I can’t say that, I’ve gotta slam Donald Trump. So that’s what he did.
BILL WHITTLE: Yeah, well this is Don Lemon, and CNN, and all the other people like him, making it very clear to the other people on the panel how much smarter that they all are -- not just how much smarter Don Lemon is, but how much smarter all of them are compared to Donald Trump and the idiots that voted for him. By the way, Don, if you’re going to be criticizing people for writing speeches as if they were done by high school kids, you might want to look at your sentence, because your sentence doesn’t make any sense grammatically. It's very badly flawed, you might want to have a -- maybe a junior high school kid edit your work next time because the sentence you actually delivered on the air is not a grammatical sentence. But put that aside for a second, Don. You know, what he basically said was, yes he sounded great, but he could only have sounded great because it was a speechwriter. Really? No kidding. A president used a speechwriter? Imagine my shock.
And what Don Lemon eventually went on to do, shortly after this, Grant, was he said we can tell that Donald Trump was just reading a teleprompter because Donald Trump impromptu doesn’t sound like that. But Barack Obama, when Barack Obama speaks off the teleprompter, he sounds exactly like Barack Obama does on the teleprompter. Which is either a flagrant lie or the most ignorant man in the world. You ever heard Barack Obama get off the teleprompter? It's like [stuttering]. I’m not exaggerating, that’s exactly what he sounds like. So, I have only one explanation for why Don Lemon would say something like this, Grant, and the only explanation I can come up with is, is he’s a malignant racist. He’s a racist. He must think that white people are not smart enough to be able to use big words without a teleprompter, while black people like him and Barack Obama can. So, if you want to dish this out to us for the last 10 or 15 years, here it comes back at you, Don. I’m calling you publicly, I’m calling you a miserable racist who thinks that white people are not smart enough to understand the big words that black guys like you and Barack Obama understand. So how do you like that, pal? Tell me how that feels.
NRATV has a history of making unhinged attacks against the press in defense of Trump, previously calling criticism of Trump an “assault against freedom and the Constitution” and claiming that by reporting on the happenings of the Trump administration, “the media that is trying to destroy our republic.”