Trump Attacks CNN’s Don Lemon for Segment Calling His Voters ‘Rubes’

“Don Lemon, the dumbest man on television (with terrible ratings!),” Trump tweets

Don Lemon
CNN

CNN’s Don Lemon is facing serious backlash on Twitter, including from the president himself, after a segment on depicting Trump’s voters as “rubes.”

“Don Lemon, the dumbest man on television (with terrible ratings!),” wrote Trump on Twitter after the Daily Caller posted a clip of the Saturday segment, telling readers this is what Lemon thinks of Americans.

During his show Saturday night, Lemon laughed as former GOP strategist Rick Wilson criticized reports that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had angrily challenged a reporter to find Ukraine on an unmarked map.

“He 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 said. “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.”

From there, Wilson put on a Southern accent to imitate someone in what he called the “credulous boomer rube” demographic: “Donald Trump is the smart one. Y’all elitists are dumb.”

“You elitists with your geography and your maps and your spelling,” added New York Times columnist Wajahat Ali as Wilson chimed back in, “And your readin’!”

“And your reading,” agreed Ali. “Your geography, knowin’ other countries, sippin’ your latte.”

“All those lines on the map!” said Wilson while Lemon laughed loudly.

“Only elitists know where Ukraine is,” said Ali, suddenly giving up the act and saying, “I’m sorry. I apologize. But it was Rick’s fault. I blame Rick.”

“That was good,” Lemon said, before trying to get the panel back on track.

Not everyone agreed with him, however.

“The arrogance, the dismissiveness, the smug cackling, the accents,” wrote Steve Krakauer, formerly of CNN and TheBlaze, when he posted the clip on Monday. “If Donald Trump wins re-election this year, I’ll remember this brief CNN segment late one Saturday night in January as the perfect encapsulation for why it happened.”

A representative for CNN did not immediately return a request for comment.

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