People may not remember “covfefe,” “very good towels”or even the more recent “they’re eating the dogs … they’re eating the cats,” but it’s hard to forget something President Donald Trump has said time and time again.
But the folks over at CNN’s “NewsNight” have been paying attention.
On Wednesday’s episode, conservative guest Ben Ferguson complained that the left’s usage of words like “fascists” and “Nazis” to describe Trump, his administration and base was leading to violence against the right — and host Abby Phillip had a pretty satisfying retort to this brand of hypocrisy.
“After the assassination of my friend Charlie Kirk, and after multiple attacks on ICE facilities, I would hope that leaders in the Democratic Party — and one of those leaders is Gavin Newsom — would know better than to go on TV and say that ICE agents are the bad guys and that they’re authoritarian, and then expect that no one’s going to listen to what he’s saying or respond to it,” Ferguson said in reference to officers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Let me just ask you a question about that, OK?” Phillip responded. “Because I think at the heart of so much of this is your insistence that using certain words leads to violence. Is that what you’re saying?”
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“Calling people fascists and Nazis and authoritarian? Yeah,” Ferguson said.
In response, Phillip had her team roll a tape of several instances in which Trump described Democrats such as former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris as “communists,” “Marxists” and “fascists.”
“We have short memories around here,” Phillip said once the clip ended.
“He’s not off,” Ferguson insisted after watching how Trump described his political opponents.
But Phillip wasn’t having any of that.
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“Are you so committed to this idea that we should just ban certain words from the lexicon? Authoritarian, fascist, Nazi, communist — should we just ban them because they’re all leading to violence?” Phillip asked Ferguson. “Or is it just that it’s not OK when your political opponents use them?”
“Abby, I think you’re incredibly smart,” Ferguson said in a tone that another panelist described as “condescending.”
“And I think that you’re smart enough to realize,” Ferguson continued. “That when you demonize law enforcement to the point where what is happening is becoming regular against ICE agents because it’s coming from people like Gavin Newsom, we should know that there is a correlation there.”
“To a degree, I take your point about demonization, I think generally,” Phillip said. “But I’m asking you about your insistence that certain words that are being used by your political opponents should be off-limits. If that is your contention, then I think lay that on the table and let’s make that clear and let’s apply it to everybody.”
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Phillip’s debate with Ferguson was prompted while the panel was discussing the right-wing backlash that the Democratic governor of California received for referring to ICE as the president’s “private domestic army” and accused the Trump administration of not just “authoritarian tendencies” but “authoritarian actions” during an appearance Tuesday on “The Tonight Show.”
“People ask, ‘Well, is ‘authoritarianism’ you being hyperbolic?’ Bullshit we’re being hyperbolic!” Newsom told host Stephen Colbert. “If you’re in a Black or brown community, it’s here in this country.”
In response, White House aide Stephen Miller accused Newsom of inciting “violence and terrorism” with his remarks.
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