Ben Shapiro Strikes Back at Critics After 'Politico Playbook' Names Don Lemon as Guest Editor

As we reported last week, the online news outlet “Politico” was met with the predictable howls of outrage from inside the newsroom and outside of it after conservative radio talk show host Ben Shapiro was asked to guest edit the Thursday edition of their “Playbook” newsletter.

The stated reasons for the backlash revolved around the standard garden-variety allegations that are usually thrown around by the left/media about conservatives: They claimed he was a hate-filled bigot and flamethrower who did not deserve to appear on the pages of such a distinguished publication or something.

The real reason, of course, was because Shapiro dropped some inconvenient truths about why most Republicans opposed President Trump’s impeachment last week.

Shapiro also noted something in the newsletter that he used today as a “told ya so” moment after CNN’s Don Lemon was revealed to be today’s guest editor of the Playbook.

In Shapiro’s Playbook newsletter Thursday, he pointed out how news outlets were trying to mainstream the unfounded assertion that all of Trump’s 74 million voters were “at least partially culpable” for the Capitol riots.

Naming Lemon as guest editor, Shapiro noted in two tweets this morning, proved his point:

Today, Politico @playbook is written by "objective journalist" Don Lemon, who has been consistently suggesting this week that everyone who voted for Trump is an evil racist. Controversy level: 0.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) January 18, 2021

Which is fine! Just noting a bit of a disparity here. And also that once again, my point is proved: lumping all conservatives together with the Capitol rioters is utterly uncontroversial and largely de rigueur in media.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) January 18, 2021

Lemon has been on a tear since what happened at the Capitol, using his nightly program on CNN to blame the millions of conservatives who voted for Trump for the violence that took place on January 6th as the House and Senate prepared to convene to affirm Electoral College votes.

My colleague Jeff Charles reported on one particularly unhinged segment between Lemon and his fellow CNNer Chris Cuomo:

“You’re in the crowd who voted for Trump. If you voted for Trump, you voted for the person who the Klan supported. You voted for the person who Nazis support. You voted for the person who the alt-right supports. That’s the crowd that you are in,” Lemon insisted. “You voted for the person who incited a crowd to go into the Capitol and potentially take the lives of lawmakers. Took the lives of police officers. Took the lives of innocent lives who were there on the Capitol that day.”

While it wasn’t clear from the video clip, one could easily imagine Lemon and Cuomo trying to keep a straight face as they pretended to care about “the lives of police officers.”

CNN’s resident media hall monitor Brian Stelter has tried to defend Lemon and Cuomo in the past from charges they are liberally biased news anchors, laughably asserting that their shows are “newscasts that have opinionated voices on them.”