Don Lemon’s blind elite ignorance
The CNN host’s mockery of Trump supporters illustrates why the president is popular
CNN host Don Lemon and his elite panelists showed their true colors last week — by mocking “hillbilly” Trump supporters. And the Republican National Committee is using it against the anti-Trump trio in a new ad, which also sprinkles in Hillary Clinton’s infamous “basket of deplorables” barb and other Democrats’ bigoted remarks about Trump supporters.
It all began on Mr. Lemon’s show after he criticized Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for the way he challenged an NPR reporter to point to Ukraine on a map.
Then one guest, Never-Trump GOP consultant Rick Wilson, took it off the cliff: Mr. Pompeo “knows deep within his heart that Donald Trump couldn’t find Ukraine on a map if you had the letter U and a picture of an actual physical crane next to it,” Mr. Wilson smirked, with Mr. Lemon chuckling along.
“He knows that this is, you know, an administration defined by ignorance of the world. And so that’s partly him playing to the base and playing to their audience. You know, the credulous boomer rube that backs Donald Trump,” Mr. Wilson finished — adding, in a Southern drawl: “Donald Trump’s the smart one — and y’all elitists are dumb!”
New York Times columnist Wajahat Ali then joined in the mockery: “You elitists with your geography and your maps and your spelling.”
Of course, Mr. Pompeo was plainly suggesting (in a conversation he thought was off the record, by the way) that the NPR reporter was ignorant.
But the CNN panel couldn’t resist using it for an out-of-nowhere attack on those “boomer rubes” — once again exposing their own ignorant bias.
Mr. Lemon later offered a paltry apology, saying he was laughing at a joke and not at Trump supporters — who he plainly thinks are dumb enough to believe him.
People like Don Lemon are shocked when someone like Donald Trump wins an election or does well in any polling. What they don’t understand is that this — elites’ smug dismissal of average Americans — is exactly why.