https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pgTlxlS7HQ
The Veterans of Foreign Wars isn’t ready to let a CNN host off the hook for comments she made about returning veterans having complicity in police violence.
“I was talking to the city councilman last week,” Brooke Baldwin said Tuesday while reporting from Baltimore. “He said, ‘Brooke, these people have to live in the community. There’s a lack of emotional investment.’ And a lot of young people — and I’ve been talking about this so much. A lot of young people — and I love our nation’s veterans, but some are coming back from war, they don’t know the communities, and they’re ready to do battle.”
After outcry over her remarks, Baldwin made an on-air apology today.
“I absolutely misspoke,” Baldwin said on CNN’s New Day this morning. “I inartfully chose my words a hundred percent, and I just wish, just speaking to all of you this morning … I wholeheartedly retract what I said. I’ve thought tremendously about this, and to our nation’s veterans — to you, I have the utmost respect for our men and women in uniform, and I wanted you to know that this morning. So to all of you, I owe you a tremendous apology. I am truly sorry.”
She offered another apology at the beginning of her afternoon show.
“No one wants peace more than those who wear the badge and those who wear the uniform,” VFW National Commander John W. Stroud said in a statement after Baldwin’s apology. “To have someone in the press make a personal statement that, apology or not, accuses military veterans as being the aggressors is as unacceptable as it is insulting.”
“Our country should celebrate the fact that highly trained and motivated veterans are choosing to continue serving their nation and communities as police officers — a profession, just like the military, that most Americans would fail even the most basic entrance requirements,” Stroud said. “Journalistic standards should demand better than accusatory statements made without any facts or reality.”
The VFW is asking its members to view Baldwin’s original comments, listen to her apology, “then if so compelled, to let her know your thoughts through CNN’s viewer feedback link here.”
Folks. Please don’t misunderstand me. Dear friends/family of mine are veterans. I was repeating a concern vocalized to me lately. That’s it.
— Brooke Baldwin (@BrookeBCNN) April 28, 2015
I am sorry for what I said earlier about veterans. It was wrong and I apologize to anyone who was hurt by my comments.
— Brooke Baldwin (@BrookeBCNN) April 28, 2015
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