In a series of short and entertaining interviews that took place in Baltimore, Maryland, fired CNN anchor and current independent podcast host Don Lemon tried to get residents of the deep blue, crime-ridden city to attack Trump’s crackdown on crime in DC. Instead of agreeing, most roasted him to his face and called for such an anti-crime strategy to come to their city, with one particularly angry resident telling Lemon that such a crackdown is exactly what is needed and that the media and government are lying about crime numbers.
During the unintentionally funny interview that aired on Friday, September 5, the series of individuals that Don Lemon spoke to in a notoriously rough neighborhood of Baltimore said that they want to see troops deal with crime in their neighborhood like Trump has made happen in DC, with one extremely agitated resident sayng that if Lemon really cared about “black lives,” he’d support a National Guard crackdown on crime.
Lemon’s conversation with that resident began with the resident telling him, “I’m from Chicago originally, and I do support [a crack down]. Chicago is a war zone.” Lemon, shocked, asked, “You think he should send the National Guard to Chicago?” Refusing to back down, the resident told him, “I really do.”
Clarifying what he wants the Guard to do, the resident said, “Not to make arrests, of course. You know, to assist, you know, to maybe stop, you know, just be a deterrent, you know. So I really am in favor of what he’s doing in DC with it.” Lemon remained shocked, asking him why, leading to a discussion of crime rates and slayings.
The resident told him, commenting on the efficacy of the Guard deployment, “I mean, listen, how many people have died in DC since we started? How many, how many people have got shot and killed?” Then, as Lemon tried to interrupt and equivocate, the resident snapped at him, “It was zero . . . how can you be more BLM than saving their lives?”
Then, as Lemon tried insisting that the victories don’t count because crime was already down, the resident again slammed him, saying, “But you also know that it’s high. I mean carjacking, even the mayor said carjacking have went down 86% Come on. Come on. What I mean. What is the real goal here? Is it to take over a city, or is it to keep people safe? That’s what you have to determine . . . I think it’s to keep people safe.”
Next, Lemon tried quibbling over the cost of deploying the Guard, leading to the man snapping at him that, in the grand scheme of things, such a cost is “Very minimal.” He added, “What kind of price are you going to put on [the number of murders prevented]? There was a murder every two days. Yeah, up until, up until he started this. There was a murder every two days.”
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Lemon concluded by insisting that the victories Trump have won against crime don’t count because he is “antagonizing” local authorities with his rhetoric and unilateral action over their protestations, insisting, “I don’t think people think that crime should not be taken down. I think it’s the method in which he’s doing it.”
Watch Lemon get slammed by the resident here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video