Joe Concha on viral CNN panel mocking Trump supporters
'The Hill's' media reporter Joe Concha told 'Fox & Friends' Wednesday that a viral CNN panel mocking Trump supporters accurately shows the mainstream media's perception of Trump and his base
A CNN panel mocking Trump supporters is representative of how a lot of the mainstream liberal media feels about the country, The Hill's media reporter Joe Concha said Wednesday.
Appearing on "Fox & Friends" with hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade, Concha said that the exchange on Saturday evening's "CNN Tonight" with host Don Lemon was a "very big deal" because it shows what many people in the media think of Trump supporters.
CNN'S VIRAL VIDEO MOCKING TRUMP SUPPORTERS RACKS UP MILLIONS MORE VIEWERS THAN ORIGINAL AIRING
"If you are old and you are white, you are an idiot and that's why you voted for the guy," Concha explained. "Or, as Rick Wilson, who is a GOP strategist, [said], the 'credulous boomer rube demo.'"
During special live coverage of the Senate impeachment trial, New York Times columnist and CNN contributor Wajahat Ali and Wilson went over the heated exchange Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had with an NPR reporter, in which he allegedly challenged the journalist to point out Ukraine on a blank map.
"[Pompeo] also 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," Wilson began, causing Lemon to chuckle. "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 demo that backs Donald Trump."
As Lemon began crying with tears of laughter, Wilson went on to depict what he thought a typical Trump supporter sounded like.
"'Donald Trump's the smart one — any y'all elitists are dumb!'" Wilson said with a heavy southern accent.
Trump later knocked Lemon on Twitter, calling him "the dumbest man on television" as well as his "terrible ratings."
After facing backlash, on Tuesday night Lemon sought to clarify his part in the exchange.
"This is personally important for me to address this, OK? Ask anyone who knows me, they'll tell you — I don't believe in belittling people, belittling anyone for who they are, what they believe, or where they're from," Lemon said towards the top of his show. "During an interview on Saturday night, one of my guests said something that made me laugh. And, while in the moment, I found that joke humorous. And I didn't catch everything that was said."
The anti-Trump anchor added, "Just to make it perfectly clear, I was laughing at the joke and not at any group of people."
"What I didn't hear in that particular clip last night of Don Lemon — because he addressed this, finally, three nights later, is the word 'sorry.' He didn't say 'I am sorry' to the 63 million people that voted for Donald Trump," Concha remarked.
"All he did was try to explain away how he didn't hear everything. But, you guys have done thousands of shows. You hear everything unless there is a lot of crosstalk. There wasn't there," he noted.
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Concha told the "Friends" hosts that the only reason Lemon made the statement was that the president called him out.
"It's not so much the criticism of Trump and you [wanting] to hit him on policy — that's fine," he said. "It's the smugness and condescension that we see from so many people in this business."
"This is the perception over and over. This is why Trump won in 2016 because these people feel that they are being dismissed," he concluded.
Fox News' Joseph A. Wulfsohn and Brian Flood contributed to this report.
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