Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

Frequent CNN Guest Compares Trump Supporters To ‘Cancer,’ Calls For ‘Fumigation’ Of US

Screenshot/YouTube/Don Lemon

Former Democratic state Rep. Bakari Sellers of South Carolina said Friday that “a more aggressive approach” was needed to “remove” President Donald Trump and his supporters.

Trump came under fire over a deleted video restating his claims about the 2020 election that included two seconds of a derogatory meme aimed at former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama. Sellers told former CNN host Don Lemon during an episode of “The Don Lemon Show” that a president willing to take “corrective action” against the “MAGA movement” would be needed.

“Like this is a little bit controversial with my friends as I sit politically because I think hindsight is showing us that um what we need after Donald Trump, what we needed after Donald Trump is not a bridge,” Sellers, a frequest guest on CNN programs, said. “Um you know, Joe Biden was somewhat of a bridge. He was supposed to be a bridge or a palate cleanser or somebody who morally and ethically was antithetical to who Donald Trump was.”

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“You know, Uncle Joe was the nice guy, older white guy, comes in and you want to eat ice cream with him, right?” Sellers continued. “Well, I think what that episode in our country’s history showed us is that we really need some fumigation, right? We need a exorcism, for lack of a better term. We need a more aggressive approach to go in and surgically remove the cancer that is the Donald Trump and MAGA movement.”

“Fumigation” is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “the use of poisonous gas to remove harmful insects, bacteria, disease, etc. from somewhere or something.”

“This is not a glitch. This isn’t like you take the cartridge out, blow on it, and put it back in like we did the old Nintendos, right? No, this is, this is not, this is not a symptom,” Sellers continued. “This is not, this is not a glitch. This is a part of the product. But we have to make sure that the person who comes next is someone who’s aggressive enough to take the corrective action needed irrespective of what they think the bounds of the office may be.”

CNN banned conservative commentator Ryan Girdusky in October 2024 after he jokingly referenced an Israeli operation that targeted the radical Islamic terrorist group Hezbollah after former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan defended describing Trump supporters as Nazis during a fiery exchange.

CNN did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.