Appearing as a guest on Sunday's CNN Newsroom to promote the latest episode of his series Believer, CNN host Reza Aslan tried to tie recent bomb threats against Jewish community centers to "rhetoric that's coming out of the White House." It was not mentioned that many of the threats are believed by law enforcement to have originated overseas, or that the one man who has been charged for a small portion of them was an anti-Trump liberal.
Shortly before 9:00 p.m. ET, host Ana Cabrera brought up the issue:
I want to ask you about something serious, something about faith and about culture. We know at least five Jewish community centers received bomb threats just today. That's the latest in a recent and very large spike of incidents coming about religious intolerance. What do you think can be done to stop this from happening?
Aslan was implicate White House "rhetoric" as he began his response:
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And indeed mosques have been attacked. A number of Indians have been attacked. Look, we are at a point right now where -- because of a lot of rhetoric that's coming out of the White House and in the halls of power -- there are groups of Americans who feel as though their very identity is under threat by the diversity that is America. And I understand where that fear comes from, but we need to do everything in our power to lower the temperature on this divisiveness.
He then lamented:
And, unfortunately, it's hard to convince the White House that -- while it may be politically expedient to continue with some of this divisive, polarizing rhetoric about Mexicans and Muslims and people who don't look like everyone else -- unfortunately, we are seeing now the results of that kind of rhetoric. And it's dangerous and it has to stop.
