CNN commentator Bakari Sellers clashed with Erin Perrine, a former press communications director for the 2020 Trump campaign, for arguing that “rhetoric” was a “problem” for “both sides” of the political aisle after former President Donald Trump doubled down on his attacks on Haitian migrants in Ohio.
At a rally in Pennsylvania on Monday, Trump repeated the false claims that Haitian migrants were abducting and eating pets in the city of Springfield, Ohio.
During his speech, Trump asked attendees: “Do you think Springfield will ever be the same? I don’t think so. The fact is, I’ll say it now: you have to get them the hell out. You have to get them out. I’m sorry.”
The crowd responded with chants of: “Send them back!”
Debate over the remarks drew heated criticism on Monday’s NewsNight on CNN and continued into a tense exchange between panelists as Perrine pointed the finger back at Democrats.
Beginning the conversation, host Abby Phillip said: “What he was doing tonight was really dark and it had nothing to do with people coming across the border, the southern border. He wasn’t making any kind of even remotely nuanced argument about that. But he’s just saying they’re not like us and send them back.”
Sellers, a former Democratic lawmaker, went further in denouncing Trump’s rhetoric: “He uses racism and xenophobia as political currency… It’s ‘Us Versus Them’. Do you want your country could it become browner or not? I mean, we’re not having a conversation about Irish migrants or Ukrainian…”
Perrine interrupted: “To be fair, he does say paddywagon and that is actually considered like an offense to the Irish Americans…”
“I haven’t heard that in a long period of time,” Sellers replied.
“He does say that,” Perrine insisted.
“I haven’t heard him put a target on the back of those individuals,” Sellers furthered.
As the debate intensified, Perrine attempted to draw parallels, mentioning chants of “Lock him up!” at Democratic rallies, referring to Trump: “This is a rhetoric problem on both sides.”
But Sellers wasn’t buying it: “It’s not the same,” he said.
Atlantic contributor and co-panelist Jamele Hill agreed: “Not even remotely the same.”
When Perrine denied committing “whataboutism,” Sellers fired back: “That’s exactly what you did.”
Perrine continued: “What I said was this happens – political discourse like this happens on both sides. I didn’t say one was better than the other and didn’t say…”
“I think that’s a level of intellectual dishonesty,” Sellers shot back.
“Well, I think it’s someone who wants to talk about what both sides are doing when it comes to the conversation,” the former Trump official responded.
At this point Sellers unleashed to blast Perrine for arguing there was any equivalence.
When you have someone convicted of 34 felony counts, convicted of, right? And someone says ‘lock them up’, and then the person on the stage says: ‘No, we’re not going to lock them up. We’re going to vote them out.’ Right? That’s what Kamala Harris says. We’re going to shift the language, that’s one thing.
But when you had these, when you have these people who are of color, right? Who are brown and black, who come from a country which has been decimated through natural disaster, through political corruption, who are coming here to contribute to this American society the way they do, and the people who they work for say they’re good citizens, they are people who pay taxes… And then you bastardize them by saying that they are the least amount of human being, by saying they eat our dogs and our cats. That is not the intellectual equivalence.
He added:
And so yeah, I have a problem with ‘lock him up’ chants at our rallies. I do. So does Kamala Harris. She puts her foot on the ground. But I also have a problem with him bastardizing black and brown people and saying ‘Get them out of the country.’ Because if something happens to a little brown boy or girl who was Haitian in Ohio that’s on his hands and they have a bullet or a bullseye is probably the better term on their back.
Watch above on CNN.
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