On Tuesday evening Erin Burnett began her prime time program with a simple question: “How stupid do you think we are?”
Pointed, politically charged and presumably directed at Washington, the anchor’s inquiry stemmed from a slew of recent controversial remarks made by President Donald Trump and his Republican allies’ subsequent willingness to cover for him.
“They shouldn’t get away with it,” Burnett said, before rolling a clip of Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen speaking on Capitol Hill. In the video, Nielsen says she cannot remember the “specific word” used by Trump during his now infamous immigration meeting. The word in question is “shithole.”
“So who does this administration think it’s fooling at this point?” Burnett asked rhetorically, before adding “certainly not Sen. Cory Booker.”
Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, grabbed headlines of his own Tuesday by admonishing Nielsen for failing to vilify the President.
“Your silence and your amnesia is complicity,” Booker bellowed.
Burnett, the “OutFront” host, closed her opening segment by running down a lengthy list of all the times Trump’s lieutenants claimed one thing while the opposite was true. With video examples, the host touched upon everything from the alleged inauguration crowd size to the President supposedly never promoting violence. It wasn’t the largest crowd, reminded Burnett, and Trump has called for aggression at times, even using such phrases as “knock the crap out of them” while on the stump.
All this led Burnett to conclude that there are “so many people willing to compromise for this President.”