Angela Rye (shown above left), a liberal commentator who appeared on a CNN “Cuomo Prime Time” panel on Monday night, got into a tense exchange with a GOP strategist during a “great debate” discussion — and wound up telling him that “white men who think like you” are the “greatest terrorist threat in this country.”
Plenty of Americans think this type of language is completely unreasonable — but here’s more of what happened in a segment that quickly went off the rails.
Republican campaign veteran Patrick Griffin (above right) was saying that in his view, President Donald Trump should “play the lottery” now that Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) have chosen to bring white-hot attention to their tenuous relationship with Israel and in the process, claim a leadership role within the Democrat Party.
Tlaib and Omar held a press conference on Monday to complain about why they were denied entry to Israel last week; they were denied entry because of their support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
But Rye, a former Congressional Black Caucus executive director, jumped on Griffin after he claimed that the Democratic “squad” of four has decided to “hijack” the Democratic Party from the reins of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Griffin also said, “This has everything to do with the fact that they are supporting a terrorist organization in Israel.”
Related: Tlaib’s Grandmother Responds to Trump: ‘May God Ruin Him’
“It’s so interesting that you use the term — [referring to] the only two Muslim women in Congress — the term you chose to use, sir, is ‘hijacking,’” Rye declared.
“It has nothing to do with whether they’re Muslim or not,” Griffin replied, as Fox News also reported. “Nothing to do with that … They’ve hijacked the party from their own principles.”
“That’s a real interesting word choice, and you understand why,” Rye said as she spoke right over her fellow panelist.
“You can talk over me all you want to,” she went on, “but the bottom line is the greatest terrorist threat in this country are white men — white men who think like you. That is the greatest terrorist threat in this country.”
Griffin immediately scoffed at her remarks and called her comments “silly rhetoric.” He said that type of commentary “doesn’t get us” anywhere.
Related: Why the Liberal Squad of Four Are All One-Term Congresswomen
“No, it’s not!” Rye shot back. “You know what’s silly? The fact that you’re on here knowing how dangerous [the] times are right now [and you’re] defending this nonsense, calling people ‘these folks,’ talking about how they hijacked the party … That’s dangerous. It’s dangerous … It’s not silly. There’s nothing silly about this conversation.”
Shortly after that comment, host Chris Cuomo — who completely lost control of the conversation as the two panelists continued to interrupt each other constantly — said, “Hold on … Hey. Hello! Who’s show is it? Calm down so we can have a rational discussion.”
When they accuse Trump of this, understand it is what THEY, in fact, are guilty of: racializing politics. https://t.co/lqxwSKRFrD
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) August 20, 2019
Yet Rye went on to insist that the biggest threat in this country right now is “racist rhetoric and that type of rhetoric fueling the type of hatred … that’s resulting in white supremacist threats” in this country.
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