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Three Days After Charlottesville, Former Va. A.G. Tells Symone Sanders to 'Shut Up'

CNN

Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli told a woman of color to shut up on national TV. 

Just days after violence broke out in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacists rallied to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee and a white nationalist emboldened by the hatred plowed into a crowd of peaceful counterprotesters, Virginia's former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli ordered a woman of color, CNN commentator Symone Sanders, to "shut up" on national TV.

In a segment on CNN's New Day with host Chris Cuomo, things came to a head between Cuccinelli and Sanders when she refused to allow him to give the white supremacists at the Charlottesville rally a pass. She said he was not speaking "to the heart" of what actually went down there when he burst out, saying, "Can I finish, Symone? Will you just shut up for a minute and let me finish?"

Sanders, national press secretary for Bernie Sanders during his presidential campaign, responded swiftly and said, "Pardon me, sir. You don't get to tell me to shut up on national television. Under no circumstances do you get to speak to me in that manner."

Even as Cuomo attempted to defuse the situation and Sanders continued to chastise Cuccinelli for his egregious tone, the former attorney general appeared blithely unaware of the severity of his actions. He even dug in and defended his tone-deaf remarks saying, "I keep getting interrupted. Eventually, I've got to stand up for myself."

Cuccinelli eventually called the gatherers at the rally an "assembly of hate groups," but he then defended Donald Trump's decision to keep Steve Bannon, who has ties to white nationalist groups, in the White House. Cuccinelli continued to use a series of exhausting contradictions to defend Trump while pretending not to.

Watch the segment below.

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Tracy E. Gilchrist