A friend of George Zimmerman — the Florida suspect facing murder charges for the February shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin — was trying to argue on a nationally televised show that his buddy didn’t break any laws by carrying a weapon and that the prosecution was presenting unfair arguments. But his microphone was cut.
HLN’s Nancy Grace abruptly ended the discussion, sending Frank Taaffe packing.
The two were discussing the lead-up to the shooting that killed Martin, and Mr. Taaffe said that Mr. Zimmerman had a “legal right to carry” his gun. He was walking the community and saw a “suspicious” person, he said, The Blaze reported.
“He was a legal, concealed-weapons-permit carrier,” Mr. Taaffe said.
Ms. Grace said: “A legal, concealed-weapons carrier. Did you just say that?”
Mr. Taaffe said again that Mr. Zimmerman wasn’t breaking the law by walking with a gun. And Ms. Grace said: “I don’t care. Jeffrey Dahmer had a legal right to have knives and a boiling pot. That doesn’t mean it’s OK.”
They then had a heated exchange about the characterization of Mr. Zimmerman “just sauntering around with a gun, looking to gun down a young black male,” with Ms. Grace claiming: “That’s exactly — he was sauntering around with a gun.”
An obviously angry Mr. Taaffe then fired back into the camera that his friend Mr. Zimmerman claimed that Martin was “on drugs. And they found THC in his system, did they not?”
Ms. Grace ordered his microphone cut.
On her HLN broadcast website, Ms. Grace said the heated exchange focused on whether the prosecution was unfair to Mr. Zimmerman, as Mr. Taaffe claimed. She said if the races were reversed — if a black man had shot a white boy — the prosecution “would be done and over with.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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