Mark McCloskey, the St. Louis man who defended his property from Black Lives Matter protestors, on Tuesday slammed CNN's Chris Cuomo for making assumptions about his case. Cuomo made the argument that President Donald Trump tweeted the video of Mr. McCloskey and his wife defending their home because of the racial implications the footage had.
"A guy stands in front of me, pulls out two loaded pistol magazines, snaps them in front of my face and says, 'You’re next.' If you were there, Chris, I think you’d feel like you had a right to defend yourself, as well," McCloskey recounted.
"Absolutely. Somebody takes out magazines, ammunition and clicks it and makes a direct threat, I would feel threatened, 100 percent," Cuomo replied.
"That’s what happened to me," McCloskey responded.
"Look, I know you are going through a process with this. I welcome you having counsel. If you were within your rights to do what you were doing, it should be judged as such. I wanted to talk to you about the broader implications because it's just a horrible picture of what’s going on in America right now. So, to me, it’s not about what’s right and wrong in a court of law, it’s what we have right and wrong about how we treat each other. And that’s why the president retweeted this tweet," Cuomo said. "Mr. Watkins, you know it. And, Mr. McCloskey, you know it. He retweeted it because he liked the image of white resistance to this [Black Lives Matter] movement – and I’m not saying that was fair to you – but we know that’s why he did it, because that’s why he deleted it. I wanted you to speak for yourself."
"I’m glad you are a mind reader because no one else thinks you are," McCloskey clapped back.
One of the producers alerted Cuomo that Trump had not deleted the video of the McCloskeys.
"Oh, in fact, he didn’t delete it," the host shrugged. "Good, makes my point."
"No," McCloskey replied.
"You didn’t say that it was said to me for me. I’m thinking about something elsewhere someone was screaming 'white power' in a video that the president retweeted. He deleted that one. He didn’t delete the one of you," Cuomo clarified.
The CNN host admitted that he jumped to assumptions about the McCloskeys even though he didn't know the whole story and only saw part of the incident.
"We both know you don’t have to be a mind reader to assess a pattern. You’re not a mind reader either. I haven’t seen the video of the person clapping the magazines. But you drew certain inferences from the behavior before you," Cuomo explained. "We've seen behavior before us, I’m making a judgment. I’m sorry that you were caught in it the way you are, if it’s not what you intended by all of this, Mr. McCloskey."
This is what happens when people in the media jump the gun and make determinations about people and instances before all the facts come out. It's been revealed that the McCloskeys support the BLM protests, so it's not like they can be accused of being racists. Mr. McCloskey is a lawyer who has actually had clients who sued police departments for police brutality. The typical MOs that the mainstream media goes with don't fit in this instance. And this is Cuomo getting caught drawing connections that don't exist.
CUOMO: Trump retweeted the video of Mark McCloskey because "he liked the image of white resistance to this [black lives matter] movement."
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 1, 2020
MCCLOSKEY: "I'm glad you're a mind reader because no one else thinks you are." pic.twitter.com/EOkdivasJ5