Stelter on Don Lemon: This Is the Kind of Retribution that Some of Trump Voters Wanted to See

EXCERPT:

STELTER: “When Trump promised retribution, this is the kind of retribution that some of his voters, not all, but some of his voters, wanted to see. And I think that is, for better or for worse, some of the context for what we‘re seeing this morning. You know, the First Amendment is meant to protect both the reporter‘s right to report, but also a congregation‘s right to worship. So, legal experts might say this is somewhat complicated, although Lemon said all along he was there as a reporter, not as an activist, and he did a really important job showing people, all of us now who can watch the video, what happened inside that church. I want to back up to that Sunday morning. That intrusion into city‘s church was sincerely shocking to many, many millions of Americans, myself included. You know, people, you know, saw that video, they saw Lemon‘s video, and they were uncomfortable by what happened inside that church, the idea that worship service was disrupted by protesters. And now there‘s a very interesting debate about whether the protesters were right or whether they were wrong to go into the church. But that is a political debate, and that‘s a debate about what forms of protest are effective. The Trump Administration‘s now moving that political debate into the legal arena and wanting to take it into court and have a court fight. And we know there have been these attempts to arrest some of the other protesters last week who were there, and now we have these arrests of these reporters who documented the scene. I‘m reminded of what one of Lemon‘s friends, Jennifer Welch, said to her on a podcast — Lemon was talking to Welch, and Welch said to Lemon, 'You are a prize for them. An independent, gay, black, happy, successful man. And this is an attempt to intimidate and beat you down.' So that‘s how Lemon‘s friends see this situation, this attempt to charge him and now this actual arrest of Lemon, he‘s in jail in L.A. now, as an attempt to target another Trump foe.”