On Sunday's CNN Newsroom, early morning anchor Natalie Allen repeatedly freaked out over President Donald Trump citing the failures of gun control in Europe in his address to the NRA as the CNN host hyped anger expressed from French and British political figures. She employed words like "preposterous" and "bizarre" to deride the President's speech.
Shortly after 4:00 a.m. Eastern, Allen brought up the issue: "U.S. President Donald Trump is angering not one, but two of America's allies. France is upset over comments Mr. Trump made about the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris."
After playing a clip of President Trump arguing that gun ownership by French civilians might have made the Paris terrorist attacks less deadly, followed by a clip of him recalling the spike in stabbings in Britain, Allen recalled that former French President Francois Hollande "called Mr. Trump's comments shameful," and noted that the French foreign ministry had also put out a statement.
A few minutes later, as University of Birmingham Professor Scott Lucas appeared as a guest, Allen brought up the issue again: "Let's begin with Mr. Trump's speech to the NRA. He has angered our closest allies from a series of comments he made regarding terrorist attacks in France and Britain." She soon added: "He made no mistake about how strong he now stands with the NRA."
After her guest recalled that Britain does not have nearly as many shootings as the U.S., the CNN host followed up:
It's almost preposterous trying to make that kind of point when the numbers aren't even close to adding up. It just boggles the mind because just a couple of months ago he was seeming to have sympathy for the Parkland high school students and their issues over guns, and now he was full on NRA all about it.
After running briefs on the story at 4:31 a.m. and at 5:01 a.m., the CNN host raised the issue again with another guest at 5:08 a.m. when she fretted the "bizarre comparisons of the American gun laws and the violence -- the terrorism that they've seen in the UK and France. Again, playing to his home base, playing to a domestic audience, but it still was kind of over the top, wasn't it?"
Without getting the point that banning one type of weapon like a gun does not prevent criminals from shifting to a different weapon -- if not simply acquire guns illegally -- her guest acknowledged that stabbings are up in Britain but dismissed the significance: "Knife crime is up, but one of the reasons knife crime may be up is that guns are not up, and it is a bizarre thing. He seems to go -- the President goes into these riffs and maybe because he's been watching too much Fox television."
A couple of hours later, CNN's New Day Sunday also brought up the issue of French and British criticism of Trump's NRA speech.
