CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin — who blamed military veterans for the Baltimore riots and later said she was sorry — was likely ordered to apologize and did so to keep from getting fired, retired Navy SEAL Carl Higbie tells
Newsmax TV.
"She's probably apologizing because one of these veteran support organizations called CNN and her producer made her do it so she can keep her job," Higbie said Friday on "The Steve Malzberg Show."
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Baldwin, who anchors "CNN Newsroom," was interviewing Rep. Elijah Cummings live when she made a comment to another anchor about a conversation she had earlier in the day.
"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," Baldwin said on-air Tuesday, reported
Mediaite.
"There's a lack of emotional investment, and a lot of young people — and I've been talking about them so much," she said. "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."
On Wednesday, 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, she said, "I absolutely misspoke. I in-artfully chose my words, 100 percent, and I whole-heartedly retract what I said."
But Higbie — author of
"Battle on the Homefront: A Navy SEAL's Mission to Save the American Dream," published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform — is fuming.
"This is incredibly offensive to me because we've done nothing but fight for our country, and you have idiots like that come on and they have no idea what they're talking about," Higbie told host Steve Malzberg.
"Veterans show more restraint in law enforcement than most people who have not served in the military who are on our streets protecting them right now.
"I can't think of anything better than to have a veteran on the police force that are well trained and everything like that. This is just CNN, and that's why nobody watches CNN . . . . This is just one more thing of these liberal left people that have no idea what they're doing."
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