Fox News host Greg Gutfeld criticized CNN’s Don Lemon for ignoring violence until it caused a political problem.
During a Wednesday segment of “The Five,” Gutfeld accused Lemon of reacting to the changing polls rather than the violence and unrest that was uprooting lives and livelihoods. (RELATED: ‘Let Me Finish, Let Me Finish’: Greg Gutfeld And Juan Williams Clash Over Trump)
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“The rioting has to stop,” Lemon told Chris Cuomo on CNN Tuesday evening. “It is showing up in the polling. It’s showing up in focus groups.”
Gutfeld referenced former Vice President Joe Biden, who had called for an end to the violence earlier in the day, saying, “All it took was CNN’s Don Lemon to get Joe to wake up and smell the arson.”
Gutfeld went on to say that because the riots had gone on so long without any real consequences, the violence was the inevitable result.
“They abdicated the responsibility and now you have anarchy, violence, you have militias, you have defenders of property,” Gutfeld continued. “Now Juan comes up and he cares because two people were shot last night. Well, that ship has sailed, Juan. I was here every day warning this would happen. I said that if something wasn’t done to quell the violence, you’re going to end up with people filling that void.”
Gutfeld then explained that the real danger was in allowing polls to dictate which situations warranted a response.
“There is a danger when you put polls before people, which is what Don Lemon did,” Gutfeld explained. “The fact that the news is somehow less important than the polls that it caused, there’s a huge flaw in that. Because you don’t consider the violence and the death and the murder important enough to address unless it affects your party or you personally, politically. So that allowed CNN and others to sit back and ignore the mayhem and death which then leads to last night.”
The unfortunate conclusion of that, Gutfeld added, was police officers who weren’t allowed to act and riots that continued unchecked.
“Any arm-chair quarterback that said that the riots were just an anomaly or in Juan’s case sporadic — ‘oh, this stuff is just sporadic.’ Last night was not sporadic. You lost the authority to comment on it. Too bad,” Gutfeld concluded.