Live, on National Television
A Louisiana sheriff on Tuesday used a portion of his press conference announcing the arrest of a suspect in the fatal shooting of former NFL player Joe McKnight to attack critics by reading in full some of their offensive remarks live, on-air, during a nationally televised press conference. Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand, questionably insisting McKnight’s murder was “not about race,” said, “Not a single witness has said up to this day that there was one racial slur uttered during the course of these events.”
But he also read verbatim the attacks on elected officials that he said came via social media:
“It’s not fair for him to be called, ‘You punk-a– Uncle Tom coon, we saw you sell out to them, you rat-a– f—ot punk,’†Normand said, quoting one critic. “That’s the tone of what we call our elected leaders for standing up and simply saying let justice prevail and let the process take its course.â€
Normand is now under fire for making the press conference more about the attacks on his fellow elected leaders than about the road rage murder of a 28-year old man, for suggesting McKnight was partially to blame for his death, and for discounting the possible race elements of the killing.
Networks that aired the press conference were caught by surprise. MSNBC’s Tamron Hall told viewers, “First of all, let me apologize for some of the language we were not expecting,†apologizing for the “racial slurs and homophobic remarks that we did not prepare and did not honestly expect from the sheriff of a police department.â€
Watch (caution – uncensored):