CNN’s Chris Cuomo links Karen Pence’s job at Immanuel Christian to Steve King’s white supremacy remarks

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Chris Cuomo compares Karen Pence’s new Christian school job to Rep. Steve King’s white supremacy comments

On CNN, anchor Chris Cuomo compared reaction to Karen Pence’s new teaching position to the controversial remarks made by Rep. Steve King.

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo tied second lady Karen Pence’s new teaching position at a private Christian school to the remarks made by GOP Iowa Rep. Steve King.

Pence, a devout Christian, will work part-time as an art teacher at Immanuel Christian School in Virginia, where she previously worked before her husband, Vice President Mike Pence, became governor of Indiana in 2013. The religious school lists “homosexual or lesbian sexual activity” as a violation of job qualification and has parents of students sign an agreement that allows the institution to expel students who go against “biblical morality.”

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The second lady has been facing a backlash from critics and LGBT activists who say that the school she works for “bans” gays, lesbians, and transgender people.

The “Cuomo Prime Time” namesake mentioned on Wednesday night the outrage sparked by Pence’s employer, while slamming President Donald Trump’s “silence” on King’s recent controversial remarks, where he asked how terms like “white nationalism” and “white supremacy” became offensive.

“When a president will not take the opportunity to condemn a message of white supremacy, choosing to do nothing here sends a message. As the epic rock band Rush taught us, even if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice,” Cuomo told his viewers. “And this choice echoes to all who comprise America’s matrix of minorities, who fear being treated as less than; blacks, Latinos, ethnics, LGBT too. None is welcomed in that message of hate. Still worse, the president’s quiet forces the suggestion that he supports what he fails to oppose.”

He then asked his viewers to “factor” Pence into the conversation.

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“Now, don’t cheapen my argument by saying ‘Cuomo’s equating Christianity and white power.’ Please, that’s just a slip of an obvious point,” the CNN anchor warned critics. “I am a flawed, failing, repentant Christian. If I had any bias, it would be in favor of faith.”

Karen Pence will work part-time as an art teacher at Immanuel Christian School in Virginia, where she previously worked before her husband, Vice President Mike Pence, became governor of Indiana in 2013. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

He continued, “The point is that the value of exclusion is embraced here. And our vice president’s wife in the place where she is, it does the same thing. And it adds to the anxiety from people around why this White House, why this president doesn’t speak out against a member of his party that embraces a message the isolates the same kinds of people that are being singled out where the vice president’s wife works.”

Cuomo added Trump’s “good people” remarks after Charlottesville, which he says “makes the hateful grateful” of this president.

“Either the president agrees with Representative King or he does not. The president finds time to tweet about myriad minutiae. He could tweet about this, but he doesn’t. Is he really afraid of losing people who agree with such ugly ideas?” Cuomo asked.