[Chris Cuomo, Cnn:] It's not the latest. It's not the first. It's not even the worse. But as always, it demands our best. Will America rise? Thank you for watching. CNN Tonight with D. Lemon right now.
[Don Lemon, Cnn:] I hope so, Chris. I hope so. That was very optimistic. You said what we have to do. But will we do it is the question that you asked. I really, really hope so, and it's hard for me to feel that way in this moment after witnessing all of these over and over and over again and just the hate that we're witnessing.
[Cuomo:] There is so much hate in the world right now. Now, older, wiser people will say it's always been that way. What changes is the will to deal with it. It goes back and forth. Muslims were made into monsters after 911. That happened with both parties. We went to war. We went to war in the wrong places, people could argue. Now there has to be an adjustment. The Obama administration cut funding to look at these white extremists also. So, that's about what's perceived as a threat. It's time to adjust. This president complicates that because he has cottoned to it.
[Lemon:] But that was
[Cuomo:] He has given comfort to these people.
[Lemon:] But when you say the Obama administration, yes, maybe factually. But that was because of political pressure from the right. That wasn't because Democrats were telling him to cut funding for that. It was because conservatives were upset, and he got
[Cuomo:] Well, be slow on that. Conservatives were upset, but Democrats also were on, you know, pun intended, they were on their own jihad against Muslim extremism, right? And then you had that weird moment where they didn't want to say Islamic extremism anymore, you know. So, there was a swing towards being reasonable about it, but that swing never led us back to focusing on the main problem at home. We never got that far. We've still put so much resources into dealing with what we should. I mean, you know, Islamist extremism is a real problem around the world and it very could manifest itself here. We know that all too painfully. So there has to be an adjustment in resources and in perspective. Resources is the easy part. Perspective is the hard part, especially with this president because he thinks acknowledging this problem is bad for him.
[Lemon:] So, listen, I'm not saying that it's never let's hope it doesn't happen here, what you said. But so far, the facts are it is a shiny object here.
[Cuomo:] Right now.
[Lemon:] And it has been. 911, that was an outlier, right?
[Cuomo:] Sure.
[Lemon:] But it is a shiny object here, and we forget about all the other terror plots and activities that have taken place, and we only look at the ones that have to do with Islam and Muslims. And as you say I'm going to steal your word the brown menace. You want to demonize the brown menace.
[Cuomo:] He did it just today.
[Lemon:] Yes. And if you and if in your closing argument, if we as Americans want to live up to what you said, we have to stop demonizing the brown menace, and we have to get to the reality about what is the actual facts and truth about what constitutes terrorism or who's responsible for most of the terrorism in this country. And until we do that, never going to happen. It's not going to happen, as they say.
[Cuomo:] Look, and even if you want to deal with it on the level of, well, I'm just somehow psychologically more comfortable being afraid of a threat that doesn't look like me
[Lemon:] Right.
[Cuomo:] People need to know; white extremists hate all of us
[Lemon:] Right.
[Cuomo:] because either you're in one of the categories like me and D. Lemon, or you're sympathetic to those categories in their mind. So really there's only a thin slice that's going to make it. And, look, we were both of us were just on the list of a guy who is exactly like this, who thought it was a good idea to kill a bunch of us. You didn't see the president jumping up and down on that. I mean how sick are we right now? We've got to be better than this. And right now, it's not just about us and politics and media and left and right and all that B.S. The world needs us at our best right now. Somebody has got to stand up to this and say, this is not who we are. This is not how we'll be. It's not us versus them. It's we. It's got to be us.
[Lemon:] Well, I'm here for it. I know you are. We'll keep working at it, and I'll try to take some of your optimism. I used to be a glass half full kind of guy. Now I'm half empty.
[Cuomo:] There's no future in division, Don.
[Lemon:] I know.
[Cuomo:] Only bad stuff happens.
[Lemon:] Yes. Have a great weekend, my friend.
[Cuomo:] You too, brother.
[Lemon:] See you. This is CNN Tonight. I'm Don Lemon. We have got to talk about the rise of white supremacy. So, sit back and please listen. Just listen, OK? I'm going to lay it all out for you right now. We've got to talk about how it's killing people around the world. We know the latest innocent victims, 49 Muslim worshippers who were shot to death in attacks on two mosques in New Zealand. Yet today, the president of the United States, who had just gotten off the phone with the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, offering his condolences to the people of New Zealand after what can only be called a brutal terror attack, the president said this.
[Unidentified Male:] Do you see that a white nationalism and a rising threat around the world?
[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] I don't really. I think it's a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess.
[Lemon:] He doesn't see it as a rising threat. Even though that's what the facts show. Just hours after the murders of 49 people. Just hours after the alleged shooter, an avowed white nationalist, posted a so- called manifesto online. Eighty-seven pages filled with anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric, calling immigrants invaders. Pay close attention to that word. That's the same language the president of the United States used today. But the president doesn't see white supremacy as a rising threat. Well, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, certainly does.
[Unidentified Male:] [Inaudible] Do you agree with him?
[Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister Of New Zeland:] No.
[Lemon:] But President Trump has a long history of minimizing the actions of white supremacists and other members of the far-right. Nobody has forgotten. Nobody has forgotten what he said after that deadly white supremacist riot in Charlottesville.
[Trump:] You also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group excuse me. Excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did.
[Lemon:] And then there's what he said about former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke.
[Trump:] Well, just so you understand, I don't know anything about David Duke, OK? I don't know anything about what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So, I don't know. I mean I don't know. Did he endorse me or what's going on, because, you know, I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists. And so, you're asking me a question that I'm supposed to be talking about people that I know nothing about. I have to look at the group. I mean I don't know what group you're talking about. You wouldn't want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about. I have to look. If you would send me a list of the groups, I will do research on them, and certainly I would disavow if I thought there was something wrong. Honestly, I don't know David Duke. I don't believe I've ever met him. I'm pretty sure I didn't meet him, and I just don't know anything about him.
[Lemon:] Homina, homina, homina. Don't forget this tweet. After mail bombs were sent to people he views as his political enemies, including CNN. Quote, "Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and now this bomb stuff happens and then the momentum greatly slows. News not talking politics. Very unfortunate." What is going on here? Very unfortunate what's going on. He doesn't want to talk about it. The president does not want to talk about it. The fact is far-right terrorists are increasingly dangerous, increasingly dangerous. How many times do we have to sound the alarm about this? We talked about it months ago on this show. A lot of people had a real problem with that. Well, here we are again. Some facts for you. According to the Anti- Defamation League, domestic extremists of all kinds killed at least 427 people in the U.S. between 2009 and 2018. Right-wing extremists were responsible for 73 percent, 73.3 percent of those deaths. Left- wing extremists were responsible for 3.2 percent, 3.2 percent. The nonpartisan think tank New America also has a breakdown of the deadly attacks in the U.S. by ideology. This is post-911 up to 2017. The Charlottesville attack, 68 people were by far 68, I should say, were by far-right groups and eight by left-wing groups or black separatists. That means using their analysis for every eight deadly attacks carried out by right-wing extremists, there was one attack carried out by left-wing extremists. White nationalists are increasingly the face of terrorism. Hold on. Just let me read this. One more fact for you. This is from the ADL. According to the ADL the extremist related murders in 2018 were overwhelmingly linked to right-wing extremists. Every one of the perpetrators had ties to at least one right-wing extremist movement. Every single one in 2018. Every one of them. Christopher Paul Hasson, a self-proclaimed white nationalist and coast guard lieutenant arrested last month after the FBI uncovered his plans for a widespread attack on officials and TV anchors, including me. Cesar Sayoc, whose former boss said he called himself a white supremacist and who is expected to plead guilty next week to charges to sending 16 mail bombs to targets including where I work, CNN. Robert Bowers, charged with shooting and killing 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in October, who posted on a social network that's a haven for white nationalists and neo-Nazis about so-called invaders, people who are refugees seeking a better life in this country. There's that word again, invader. A word that turns up over and over and over again in white nationalist propaganda although a better word for it is lies. The suspect in the New Zealand attack repeatedly called immigrants invaders in his so-called manifesto. Words matter. So it matters that the president used the word himself today, the day after the New Zealand terror attack. You know someone wrote that, right? When he was talking about his manufactured crisis at the border. Watch this.
[Trump:] People hate the word invasion, but that's what it is.
[Lemon:] Words matter. It matters what this president has said about Muslims. Listen to this. It's from a town hall during the campaign.
[Unidentified Male:] We have a problem in this country. It's called Muslims. We know our current president is one.
[Trump:] Right.
[Unidentified Male:] You know he's not even an American.
[Trump:] We need this question.
[Unidentified Male:] But anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That's my question. When can we get rid of them?
[Trump:] We're going to be looking at a lot of different things. And you know, a lot of people are saying that, and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We're going to be looking at that and plenty of other things.
[Lemon:] No. There was no John McCain moment in there. No, he's not a Muslim. And what if he was Muslim? But there's no, no, he's not a Muslim. There is no denouncing the ignorance of what that guy said. What that guy said was a lie. It was ignorance. The president didn't announce it. He just doubled down on it. Well, we're going to be doing a lot of things. There's more.
[Trump:] I think Islam hates us. There's something there's something there. There's a tremendous hatred there. There's a tremendous hatred. I don't notice Swedish people knocking down the World Trade Center. There's a Muslim problem in the world. By the way, you know it, and I know it. Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.
[Lemon:] Is it any surprise that the alleged shooter in New Zealand wrote this about Donald Trump in his so-called manifesto? He asks himself, are you a supporter? And he answers himself. As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose, sure. His own words. Words matter. It matters when President Trump downplays the real emergency of global white supremacist terrorism. It matters when he ignores the real emergency of climate change even as students around the world took to the streets today to demand action. But this president focused on a manufactured emergency at the border instead of the real emergencies that threaten all of you, all of us. Think about that. And think about this. What is behind the rise of white nationalism, and can we find radicals before they attack? That's the big question for Wajahat Ali and Phil Mudd, next.