In the following clip from Monday's The Lead, host Jim Sciutto and commentators Rebecca Berg of Real Clear Politics and Matt Viser of the Boston Globe debated whether President-elect Donald Trump would or should denounce often racist and anti-Semitic members of the so-called “alt-right” who helped get him elected.
The discussion and the segment's controversial on-screen headline (known as a chyron) stem from a New York Times article published on Sunday in which Richard B. Spencer, president of the white-nationalist National Policy Institute, questioned the humanity of Jews, whom, he believes, control the media to protect their personal interests.
“One wonders if these people are people at all, or instead soulless golem,” Richard Spencer told a crowd in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.
Some online interpreted CNN's chyron—“Alt-right founder questions if Jews are people”—as the network itself asking whether Jews are, in fact, people. Instead, the conversation surrounded the Trump campaign's seemingly cozy relationship with bigots, which gained further steam as the president-elect selected Steve Bannon, former head of alt-right organ Breitbart News, as his chief strategist.
