CNN Host Challenges New York Post Guest Over Culture Claims

A CNN host pressed a New York Post financial correspondent on Saturday after the correspondent suggested that some cultures are “not compatible” with the United States.

Abby Phillip, the CNN host, questioned Lydia Moynihan of the New York Post on “Table For Five,” asking her to specify which cultures she was referring to.

Moynihan responded, “Culturally, there are things that we do not want in America. Female genital mutilation happens in Somalia. We don’t want that here. So I think it’s OK to say, ‘Look, there are cultural things that we don’t want to bring into America.’”

Moynihan's comments followed remarks made earlier in the week by President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. Trump had boasted about his administration's crackdown on immigration from what he called “hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia, and many other countries,” later admitting he'd used the term “shithole countries.”

Trump had said, “We had a meeting, and I said, ‘Why is it we only take people from shithole countries?’ Right? ‘Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden?’ But we always take people from Somalia. Places that are a disaster. Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.”

Phillip responded to Moynihan by saying she believed Trump felt emboldened to make such remarks because there were no longer penalties for them. She added that it is now acceptable within the Republican Party “to say, ‘We only want to let white people come into this country. We only want immigrants from European countries.’”

Moynihan countered, “This is not a race issue. This is a cultural issue,” before Phillip interjected.