CNN's Brooke Baldwin set off a firestorm of online fury when, while broadcasting from the scene of the Baltimore riots, she appeared to blame returning military veterans hired as Baltimore police for the destruction.
While interviewing Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, Baldwin said: "We talk about training. We talk about having officers. I was talking to the city councilman last week. He said, Brooke, these people have to live in the community. There's a lack of emotional investment. And a lot of young people — and I've been talking about there so much. A lot of young people, and I love our nation's veterans, but some are coming back from war, they don't know the communities, and they're ready to do battle."
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Twitter erupted with comments such as "disgraceful" and "This is an idiotic, unproductive and utterly incorrect assertion about veterans."
Baldwin took to Twitter in an attempt to lessen the damage, tweeting: "Folks. Please don't misunderstand me. Dear friends/family of mine are veterans. I was repeating a concern vocalized to me lately. That's it," Mediaite reported,
followed by another tweet, "I am sorry for what I said earlier about veterans. It was wrong and I apologize to anyone who was hurt by my comments."
On Wednesday morning,
Baldwin tweeted: "To my veteran friends: please tune into CNN in a few minutes. I wanted to come on tv first thing today. I owe you a heartfelt apology."
On air, Baldwin launched into an emotional apology for her words, saying, "I absolutely misspoke. I in-artfully chose my words, 100 percent, and I whole-heartedly retract what I said.
"I have the utmost respect for the men and women in uniform. To all of you, I owe you a tremendous apology."
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Breitbart News commented: "This is pure CNN, throwing out anti-science smears towards the best people this country has to offer, while it is in reality the rioters who are 'doing battle.' It is savages who are looting and burning and causing anarchy, not the police."
Jonah Goldberg,
writing in the National Review, said, "CNN's Brooke Baldwin seems to believe that the real culprits behind the riots just might be veterans returning home from Bush's wars.
"The kids jumping up and down on burned-out cop cars clearly didn't spend two tours in Fallujah or Kandahar. Moreover, the people most 'ready for battle' aren't the veterans of conflicts abroad, but veterans of the battle of Ferguson. These migratory professional instigators think it's bold and revolutionary for thugs to burn down middle class black shops and the chain drug stores low income people buy their medicines from.
"Ultimately these losers aren't responsible for making the conditions ripe for such instigation, either. They're opportunists. And the opportunity was created by corrupt one-party rule in Baltimore and other Democrat-monopolized cities across the country," Goldberg wrote.
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