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CNN presenter Don Lemon suggested Monday that the skin color of Gabby Petito’s fiancé Brian Laundrie granted him the “privilege” of not speaking to police during the investigation into his disappearance and possible death.
Petito’s case has captured the country since his disappearance earlier this month. Authorities on Sunday found a body in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, believed to be the missing young woman, while the current fate of Laundrie, who has been named as a person of interest in the case, remains unknown . The discovered body will undergo an autopsy on Tuesday.
Laundrie’s family members were ordered by their lawyer not to speak to authorities, which Lemon attributed to a “privilege.”
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“You ask any person of color, you ask a black man who – if he has that kind of privilege,” Lemon said Monday night.
“It’s not a privilege, it’s a right,” CNN’s Chris Cuomo said, pushing back. He added that any defense attorney would advise his client not to speak to the police as he can use anything he says against him.
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Lemon argued that while cops are the good guys in many cases, they “aren’t” in many other cases. He painted a picture of what he said often went behind closed doors when police arrested blacks and poor people, as many, he said, could not afford a lawyer.
“Do you think of yourself as someone who, a Don Lemon, if I wasn’t who I am, they’d be like, ‘Hey, put your ass in here! What do you know about the disappearance of such and such? Why won “Aren’t you talking? Do you need a lawyer because you’re guilty?” It would all decrease, ”Lemon said of the behavior of the police.
MSNBC’s Joy Reid also referred to race in her analysis of Petito’s disappearance, calling media coverage of his case on Monday “missing white woman syndrome.”
“It goes without saying that no family should ever have to endure this kind of pain. And the Petito family certainly deserves answers and justice,” Reid said on “The ReidOut” Monday night. “But the way this story has captivated the nation makes many wonder, why not the same media attention when people of color go missing?”
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Lemon raised a similar point, noting viewers that while he was in New York City, several people, most of them white, asked him why the networks were spending so much time covering a missing white girl and not other missing young women. . The presenter said critics were wrong to accuse him of making the case for race.
“People talk to me about this when it comes to race,” Lemon said. “They told Chris about it. You see it online. Don’t pretend I’m turning this into something it’s not.”
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