CNN’s Don Lemon: We Have to Stop Beating Around the Bush and Call Trump a Racist

RUSH EXCERPT:

LEMON: "I don’t know if it will be different. Listen, if it does happen, I think it will be a productive step, but I have very little faith in the folks in Washington, especially the Republicans in Washington, because not many of them have spoken out, including the people who were in that room. And I have to say, Wolf, that we have to stop trying to, you know, be judicious and eloquent in our language. And we have to call it what it is. And I’m glad Cornell just did. It is how much — how much more evidence do you need to figure this out? Before this person even became a presidential candidate, before he insulted Mexicans and called them rapists, coming down the elevator, he started the racist or at least he promoted the racist birther movement. And kept doing it. And that is how he gained prominence to come into the political arena. So we have to call it what it is. I saw John Kasich on air earlier, and Jake asked him, is this president a racist? And he said, I don’t want to call names. Well, I’m black, Wolf, you’re white, you’re Jewish, I’m protestant. We have to start calling things what they are. If an apple is an apple, we need to call it that, it is not a banana. So if someone displays this racist rhetoric and behavior, and there’s evidence time after time after time, we have to call it that. I don’t know what censuring will do, but we have to stop asking if this person is a racist. That is what he is, that is what the evidence shows. So that is what we must do and stop beating around the bush. And we have to find, figure out who are we? That is the question, how do we react to it? How do we respond to it? Because it is not a question about whether he is or not, we know what he is and he has shown us what he is, and that is the evidence. There it is."