Robert Zimmerman blasts ‘liberal media’, calls racially incendiary tweets an ‘error in judgment’
NEWS -- Twelve hours before he was set to appear on cable television to explain a weekend Twitter rant many have called racist, Robert Zimmermann Jr. tweeted an apology...
During the interview with Morgan, Zimmerman repeated his apology for the Twitter comments, saying, “I don’t think Twitter is the place to make points about what you recall a year ago. Because the recollections that I have or that we have as a family specifically are very different than what can be portrayed in 140 characters.”
He added: “Now I realized those were controversial and offensive, and I did publicly apologize for them. I don’t think it was the right thing to do that way.” But he continued to insist that the real issue was the media’s refusal to portray Martin in the same, glaring light Elkins, or his brother, have been.
“The point about the pictures. It was a larger point on the media and their honesty in portraying the person who encountered my brother February 26th. We’ve been led to believe that it’s a junior high school aged person because of the pictures, the way he’s portrayed.”
“Well, he was 17,” an incredulous Morgan retorted.
Much of Morgan’s questioning focused on the tweet indicating that the shocking alleged crime two teens are accused of committing in Georgia, “is the reason blacks are considered ‘risky.'”
Morgan said of the teens charged in the Georgia case: “the reason why I want to take you back to that is that when you say — what these two black teens did to a woman and her baby, they shot the baby in the head is the allegation they have been charged with. … A more gruesome crime would be hard to imagine.”
“You are likening this to Trayvon Martin who was unarmed.”
“What I’m saying is, yes, he was 17. And he chose to portray himself by his own hand in a certain way,” Zimmerman said of Martin, after reiterating his apology.
“What I’m saying is, both of these people were 17 years old. And before Trayvon Martin was a household name and before De’Marquis from Georgia was a household name, they had an identity that they portrayed. And I’m not saying that because you flick off a camera that says anything about you other than that is the way you choose to portray yourself.”
Citing what he called additional pictures of Martin obtained by the conservative website The Daily Caller that he says make the picture he composited and posted, “the tip of the iceberg,” Zimmerman complained that “we got to know a better picture of who Trayvon Martin was” through the social media images of the slain teen. But he said “those pics were surrounded in some kindof cloak of secrecy and they’re not portrayed in the media.” Meanwhile, he complained that George Zimmerman “is portrayed as a murderer in the liberal media.”
Natalie Jackson, who is part of the legal team representing Martin’s family, and who Zimmerman criticized during the interview, along with lead attorney Ben Crump and the family’s public relations representative, Ryan Julisaon, said it’s ironic that Zimmerman is seeking the benefit of the doubt for his social media communications, but not granting the same to the slain Miami teen.
“You, as a 30-year-old [sic] want to say that you made a mistake on your Twitter account, but you want a 17-year-old teenager who was the victim of a crime to have his alleged social media portrayed in the most negative light,” she said after watching the CNN interview.
Next: Seeking distance from Robert Zimmerman
