CNN anchor Don Lemon lost his cool Thursday when he thought a fellow panelist on Ashleigh Banfield’s “Legal View” criticized Michelle Obama for doing “cheap hashtag activism” when she joined the #BringBackOurGirls social media movement on Wednesday.
The panel (above) was actually discussing Monica Lewinsky’s new Vanity Fair article when The Blaze’s Will Cain called the infamous presidential mistress “a cheap punchline” in the media, then expressed a larger frustration with how the public reacts to issues.
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“This is consistent. We do cheap outrage on TV, we do cheap hashtag activism when it comes to the girls with Boko Haram, and this is cheap,” Cain said. “I’m telling you that putting a tweet up with a hashtag, you didn’t do your duty today.”
Lemon and the other panelists did not appreciate the comparison between social media chatter about Lewinsky and the girls who have been kidnapped by the Nigerian terrorist organization.
“That’s disgusting to say about over 200 girls,” Lemon said. “What do you expect the first lady to do?”
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“I said society had gotten cheap,” Cain shot back. “We do cheap outrage on television, we do cheap hashtag activism on Twitter … Every single person, Don! It’s a meme. I didn’t say anything about the first lady! You did!”
The shouting match erupted when Cain said the U.S. government should “make its policy outside of Twitter.”
“What have you done?” Lemon asked. “What did you do for those girls? What did you do personally for them? If you’re so outraged by it, what have you done? Besides sit here on television and criticize other people’s efforts, if you’re so concerned about it, what have you done?”
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But the more important question is whether or not Cain ever directly criticized the first lady during what Banfield described as a “healthy conversation.”
“I have been painted in an unfair and inaccurate light,” Cain concluded. “The only person that invoked the first lady today was Don Lemon, not me.”