Cross posted on the MRC's NewsBusters blog
On Thursday's CNN Newsroom, as host Brooke Baldwin devoted a segment to a mentally disturbed man who assaulted a 13-year-old boy for refusing to remove his hat during the national anthem, host Baldwin and correspondent Sara Sidner suggested that President Donald Trump is to blame for inspiring the man to perpetrate the violent act.
After recalling reports that 39-year-old Kurt Brockway attacked the boy during the national anthem on a fairground in Montana because he refused to remove his cap, nearing the end of the segment at 3:00 p.m. Eastern, Sidner relayed claims by Brockway's lawyer placing tying the act to the President's demands that the American flag be respected:
The attorney for Brockway, the suspect, said that his client does have a brain injury and has problems with impulse control. Get this: He said that Brockway takes the rhetoric of President Trump literally and is angered any time he thinks someone was disrespecting the flag.
She added: "So apparently he thought this child was disrespecting the flag, and he attacked him."
Baldwin went along with the notion of blaming President Trump as she responded: "Words matter. Sara Sidner, thank you."