‘Anybody with half a brain who read that transcript knows exactly what the president was saying…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) CNN Anchor Don Lemon attacked NeverTrump analyst John Kasich on Monday for failing to fall in line with uncorroborated leftist dogma about a phone call between President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart.
Lemon took umbrage after Kasich, the former Republican governor from Ohio and Trump’s 2016 presidential primary opponent, said it would be “incumbent on the Democrats to lay out a very strong case” in order to garner GOP support for impeachment, reported Mediaite.
“Maybe it’s incumbent upon the politicians, the people who are actually leaders, to tell the people exactly what’s going on instead of having the president and his apologists shape a message that is not true,” Lemon snipped, “because anybody with half a brain who read that transcript knows exactly what the president was saying.”
Lemon blamed conservative media, without evidence, for spreading a false message that had led many Republican voters to skepticism and disinterest in the Democrats’ latest impeachment attempt.
“It is obvious,” he claimed. “It’s not nebulous. It’s not, ‘Well, maybe he meant that.’ You know exactly what he meant. All you have to do is read it.”
Accounts of the July 26 phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy provided the basis for a deep-state whistleblower’s claim that Trump was threatening to withhold military support if Ukraine refused to investigate allegations of corruption surrounding former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
The whistleblower’s complaint was directed to the attention of House Democratic leaders who—after having faltered in repeated efforts to find dirt on Trump that might aid in his removal from office—used it last month to announce the start of impeachment proceedings.
The House has yet to formally vote on its impeachment probe, which has led to some legal uncertainty as to its actual status. However, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, both California Democrats, have issued a raft of subpoenas to the White House and other executive offices.
Schiff, in one of the opening committee hearings, controversially offered his own interpretive rendition of the transcript, which he later said was a “satire.”
While he and others, immediately following the transcript’s release, asserted that it need not show direct evidence of a “quid pro quo” exchange between the two leaders, Lemon’s spin reflected a change in tactics to insist that such an arrangement is hiding in plain sight.
The rhetoric echoed earlier claims—since debunked—that the Mueller Report contained coded language about Russian collusion and obstruction of justice that would offer House Democrats their long-sought rationale for impeachment.
Kasich countered Lemon’s claims by saying Republicans and other impeachment skeptics may reasonably dispute his interpretation.
“People disagree with the transcript, and they’re honest people,” Kasich said.
But Lemon responded by attacking Kasich for acting like an “apologist” on behalf of the president.
“You’re not helping people understand the problem, then you are part of the problem,” he said.
Trump has criticized Lemon in the past, calling him the “dumbest man on TV” while frequently sparring with CNN during White House briefings and attacking the “fake news” network in his political rallies.
Another false story, this time in the Failing @nytimes, that I watch 4-8 hours of television a day – Wrong! Also, I seldom, if ever, watch CNN or MSNBC, both of which I consider Fake News. I never watch Don Lemon, who I once called the “dumbest man on television!” Bad Reporting.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 11, 2017