by WorldTribune Staff, April 4, 2019
CNN host Christiane Amanpour in a recent interview asked former FBI Director James Comey if chants during President Donald Trump’s campaign rallies of “lock her up” should have been “shut down” because they amounted to potential dangerous “hate speech.”
“Of course, ‘lock her up’ was a feature of the 2016 Trump campaign,” Amanpour said, asking “do you in retrospect wish that people like yourself, the FBI, I mean, the people in charge of law and order, had shut down that language – that it was dangerous potentially, that it could’ve created violence, that it’s kind of hate speech. Should that have been allowed?”
Comey shrugged off the question and then actually went on to explain the First Amendment to Amanpour, who is CNN’s chief international anchor.
“That’s not the role for government to play,” Comey said. “The beauty of this country is people can say what they want, even if it’s misleading and it’s demagoguery.”
Comey did manage to get off a shot at Republicans, saying “the people who should have shut it down were Republicans, who understand the rule of law and the values that they claim to stand for. Shame on them, but it wasn’t a role for government to play.”
In an April 3 op-ed for the Washington Examiner, Becket Adams noted that Amanpour has not always been so confrontational in interviews.
Adams wrote: “Let us not forget when she interviewed Hillary Clinton in May 2017, tossing the two-time failed presidential candidate the softest softballs ever lobbed, including when the CNN anchor asked: [Y]ou’ve just spoken about the sexism and misogyny and inequity around the world, but do you believe it exists here still? … And do you think – were you a victim of misogyny, and why do you think you lost the majority of the white female vote?”
The Trump administration is not without its upsides for Amanpour, Adams noted. The CNN anchor explained that Trump’s victory has caused “a huge rise in necessary activism” to combat what she characterizes as a “grave and existential threat.”
Amanpour has also said: “You know, everybody was getting a little lazy, everyone was taking everything for granted, particularly in the United States. And I think women have come out, you know, black people have come out. The press have come out. Everybody is coming out to defend their profession and their right to exist under the Constitution and the laws of the United States.”
Adams wrote: “You’ll pardon me, then, for not being even a little surprised to learn Amanpour is maybe a little sympathetic to arresting opponents of the Democratic Party for so-called ‘hate speech.’ ”
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