Transcript
Don Lemon (0:00)
Walking up to the room, and I pressed the elevator button. And all of a sudden, I feel myself being jostled and people trying to grab me and put me in handcuffs. And I said, what are you doing here? And they said, we came to arrest you. And I said, who are you? And then finally, they identified themselves. And I said, if you are who you are, then where's the warrant? And they didn't have a warrant, so they had to wait for someone from outside, an FBI guy, to come in to show me a warrant on a cell phone. And then they. It was a bunch of guys, and they took me outside. FBI guys were out there. I mean, it was a. It had to be maybe a dozen people, which is a waste, Jimmy. Of resources, because I had told them weeks before and maybe once or twice that we would. You know, I think my attorney tried to contact them once, maybe twice, that I could just go in, and it would have to be the folks who were just working there that day, and they wouldn't have to have all these people.
Chris Cuomo (0:52)
The. Just gets deeper and deeper. I gotta tell you. Here's the problem. I call it the Don Lemma, the Don Lemon Dilemma, which is that Don is masking what this is really about. And there are too many of us basing their opinion on what happened at that protest at that church in Minnesota on our feelings about Don. And that is allowing something that should matter to the many is now being reduced to something that's just about the few. And I want to talk about why this has to be defended and why it has to be wrong, not because it's Don Lemon, despite it being Don Lemon. And I get it. All you guys are coming at me about what you think and why you think I should think about it differently and what it is and what it isn't in the law and how you feel. And I want to talk about it. And there's so much going on that it's too much for just me. So welcome to the threesome here on the Chris Cuomo Project. With me, of course. Greg. Of course. And Amish. Okay. And here's why everybody's got a different piece on this, of what is triggering them or tweaking them about the situation, what matters to them. So I figured we might as well just all discuss it together, because we're doing it off camera. We might as well do it on camera as well. And I'll just be real brief about it. Okay? And then we'll get each guy's take. Here's my take. The arrest is wrong. All day long, okay? The arrests of these two journalists, okay? And for me, Don Lemon being arrested is wrong, okay? Georgia Fort being arrested is crazy wrong. Why? As you probably know right now, there was a controversial protest planned to go into a church in Minnesota and protest the fact that the preacher, one of the preachers there, part of the clergy of that church, works with ice. And two journalists were told that there was going to be a protest. Where and what to be determined. And they showed up and were told, we're going into this church to protest. And they decided to embed, as we say in my business, and go in with them to report on what happened. One was Georgia Fort, one was Don Lemon, and they went in. The protest happened. The organizer has her own explanation, as if the preacher was asking anybody a question, and she decided to answer the question, whatever you want to believe. It became a protest, and the services were interrupted, and Don Lemon and Georgia Fort reported live Stream in real time on what was happening. And Don Lemonade interviewed the preacher. I don't know if Georgia Fort did. I don't remember, but easily discoverable. And he said during the interview, no, these people have a First Amendment right to be here. And the preacher kept saying, yeah, we have a First Amendment right to worship. And this law that exists that I don't know that Don even knew. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. The FACE act is the freedom of access to clinical entrances. Why? Because it started with something that happened at a health clinic, but it includes places of worship. Okay. That we want to keep safe so that people can exercise their rights within. And then the federal government decided that not only was the protest a violation of the FACE act, which it may be, by the way. It may be. You don't hear me arguing that what they did in there is right. That's what a lot of you are accusing me of, that I'm saying that everything that happened in that church was right. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. I'm saying they. They say they were invited in. The preacher says indicates they were not invited in. I'm saying that arresting those two journalists as being part of the protest is wrong. And I think that the government knows it's wrong, and they think that they have a loophole, which is this law, to catch them. As if reporting in there, reporting a part of what's going on, being present is enough. And it's not enough. It's not enough. Under that statute, you have to show force or intimidation. And I don't think it's even a close call, but many people do. I don't like some of the choices that Don made. I would not have made those same choices. I don't think most journalists would have made those same choices, which is why. One reason, we've never seen anything like this before, but what Georgia Fort did was very different. And again, there was pushing some boundaries on her end, too. But whether you look at the indictment or her actual statements and her actual video, it's not even a close call for her. And that's something that should matter to all of us, because if the government is in the business of saying, who's a journalist? We got a big problem, especially this administration. So for me, it's not about Don and wanting to protect him. For Don, it's about Don. There's a reason he doesn't talk about Georgia Fort much. He's about himself. He's liking the moment. He's enjoying it. That's what his work is about. He puts himself at the center, not the way Hunter S. Thompson did. I don't give him that kind of credit for gonzo journalism because he's not that deep. It's simple. Simple. He wants to be the story. He's about himself. And that's okay. It's working for him, especially in digital media, where it just keeps rewarding you for being provocative. But he's still a journalist. Whether or not you like his journalism, whether or not it's good journalism or bad journalism, he's still a journalist. And I think the arrest was wrong, but I get that there's a diversity of opinion on this. Hence Grigotte staring at me like, you know, my head's got poop on top of it. I would hope not. Oh, my God.