The mayor of Baltimore and the governor of Maryland both walked off an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon after he questioned whether officials were quick enough to react to violence in Baltimore in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray.
Lemon began the interview by asking the two officials why Maryland did not activate a state of emergency until Monday when the order was ready on Saturday, according to a clip highlighted by Mediaite.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) explained that the state prepared the order ahead of time, and that he signed the order when Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake asked for the state’s help.
Lemon then turned to the mayor, asking why she took to long to ask for back-up.
“We have to respond to what was going on on the ground. We’ve seen what happened when other jurisdictions have overreacted and brought in resources that escalated the violence on the street, and I didn’t want that to happen in Baltimore,” Rawlings-Blake responded. “When we saw the breakout violence in the small groups, we realized that it was time to bring in additional resources.”
Lemon asked twice more why Maryland did not declare a state of emergency sooner.
Rawlings-Blake said that she did not want Baltimore to become a “military state” and wanted to facilitate free speech for peaceful protesters.
After a 10-minute long interview with Lemon, the two officials left the interview as Lemon asked about curfews.
“How are you going to enforce a curfew tomorrow…” Lemon began to ask.
“I think we’re going to have to go,” Hogan said as he and Rawlings-Blake began to walk away.
“How are you going to enforce a curfew tomorrow when kids are out of school and they’ve said that many of the young people are the people who are doing this?” Lemon asked as the officials removed their microphones.
After Hogan and Rawlings-Blake left, Lemon told viewers that the two officials were “touchy when it comes to the situation, feeling that they have answered all of the questions.”
Watch the interview below via YouTube. Hogan and Rawlings-Blake leave around the 10:30 mark.
A ten minute on-camera interview with Don Lemon, in the middle of a city-wide crisis, is probably 9 minutes more time than they should have given to Lemon’s Monday-morning quarterbacking interrogations.
I was thinking more like 10:30 too long.
Lemon has a point: why have a militarized police force that skirts posse comitatus if it doesn’t swoop in decisively to quell protests preemptively? If preemptive strikes are good enough to justify killing a million Iraqis, certainly a few black folk whose lives clearly don’t matter shouldn’t stand in the way.
These politicians best get on the stick and protect that big box chain store that won’t pay a living wage from the consequences borne of day-to-day police actions. Don Lemon is right to avoid delving into what precipitated this mess and asking the hard questions about how such police tactics could be tolerated.
Lemon actually thinks people ridicule him because he’s gay. I caught a glimpse of him on some inane morning show hosted by Meredith Viera, and his attitude was “haters will hate.” Yeah, right.
Lemon tree very pretty
And the Lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor Lemon
Is impossible to eat
He has a point. What if a rift had suddenly opened in the space-time continuum and deposited a gigantic horde of new rioters on the streets before the state of emergency was finally declared? They would have totally been caught off guard.
Hey, I’m just putting it out there.