Former Navy SEAL Ephraim Mattos Responds to CNN’s Don Lemon’s racist, sexist remarks
Former US Navy SEAL, Ephraim Mattos, has responded to comments made this week by Don Lemon on CNN’s Cuomo Prime Time.
“We have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them.” — Don Lemon on CNN (October 29, 2018)
Don Lemon at the 2018 Pulitzer Prizes photo/ Fuzheado
Here is Mattos’ response:
After surviving three wars, a gunshot wound, a near fatal drowning, a failed parachute, Taliban ambushes, ISIS snipers, mortars, mine-fields, suicide bombers and laying down my life for the cause of freedom while fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with my brother Arabs, Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Animists, and Atheists, I have now returned home to the USA where a CNN host has labeled me as a radicalized right wing terrorist simply because of my gender and the color of my skin.
I represent just one of the hundreds of thousands of conservative white men who have fought to preserve freedom in this great Nation and in other nations. My forefathers are the 3% who founded this Republic against the might of the British Army. It was white Conservative men who died by the tens of thousands after charging into our southern states to free our black brothers from the slavery imposed on them by the Liberal left. We were the ones who acknowledged that women have a right to vote. We held the line in WWI and charged the beaches of Normandy in WWII. We have fought for freedom and liberty for generations and we continue to do so today alongside all of our brothers and sisters regardless of their race or religion.
In the early 1930s, Hitler said the same thing about the Jews that Don Lemon of CNN just said about white men. This is the true face of the Democratic Party. First they enslaved and killed blacks, and now they use them to spew hatred and lies against the very people who have fought for generations to free them and uplift them.
Remember that when you go to vote.
One final thought: To make a point, I have referred to myself as a “white male” in the previous sentences multiple times, but I must make it clear that I identify as simply “American,” not as “white” or “male” or “Republican.”
Although blatantly racist and hateful, do not let Don Lemon’s ignorant words drive you into viewing yourself only by your race and religion. Identity politics does not lead to freedom. It only leads to hatred and division and an “us vs. them” mentality.
If CNN does not fire Don Lemon immediately, it only goes to show that they are truly the “enemy of the people.”
— Ephraim Mattos, Former US Navy SEAL
Mattos teamed up with New York Times bestselling author Scott McEwen (American Sniper) to write the new book, City of Death: Humanitarian Warriors in the Battle of Mosul — released October 23rd from Center Street / Hachette Book Group.
In City of Death, Mattos recounts in vivid detail what he saw and felt on the frontlines of the war on ISIS. While volunteering with the Free Burma Rangers, Mattos evacuated the wounded, conducted rescue missions, and at times fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the Iraqi Army against ISIS. Filled with raw and emotional descriptions of what it’s like to come face-to-face with death, this is the harrowing and uplifting true story of a small group of men who risked everything to save the lives of the Iraqi people and who followed the credence, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
Until being shot by ISIS on a suicidal rescue mission, Mattos witnessed unexplainable acts of courage and sacrifice by the Free Burma Rangers, who, while under heavy machine gun and mortar fire, assaulted across ISIS minefields, used themselves as human shields, and sprinted down ISIS-infested streets – all to retrieve wounded civilians.
