Washington ExaminerMay 12, 20261 min read

‘Don’t be a d***’: CNN commentator clashes with Kevin O’Leary over redistricting

The article centers a contentious on-air exchange with heavy emphasis on inflammatory language (the censored expletive appears multiple times in the headline and body), which sensationalizes conflict over substantive debate. While both O'Leary and Sellers are quoted directly, the framing leans slightly toward legitimizing O'Leary's constitutionalist argument ('The Constitution is being upheld') without deeper examination of redistricting's documented effects on Black representation or voting access.

Primary voices: media outlet, corporate or institutional spokesperson

This article does not address empirical data on racial gerrymandering or documented partisan redistricting effects in Southern states
This article does not provide context on the legal or historical basis for Voting Rights Act protections that preceded this dispute
This article does not explain what specific redistricting maps or states were being discussed

Framing may shift if this exchange becomes part of a larger legal challenge to redistricting practices, which could contextualize the constitutional claims differently.

Establishment framingCharged languageBoth-sides framing

CNN commentator Bakari Sellers clashed with Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary on Monday over GOP redistricting and told O’Leary, “Don’t be a d***.”

“What I’m telling you is that there are people in this country that fought, died, and bled for the right to vote. Don’t be a d***,” Sellers said on CNN’s NewsNight With Abby Phillip.

The pushback from Sellers came after O’Leary’s comment, “At the end of the day, the state decides at the state level, it’s in the Constitution, get over it.”

Sellers then said that O’Leary is 71 years old and lived through Brown v. Board of Education and argued that there is still a generation alive who remembers.

O’Leary asked what Sellers’s point was.

“My point is that my mother was born in 1951. She desegregated schools. My father was shot in the civil rights movement,” Sellers said.

In the middle of Sellers’s sentence, O’Leary said, “And?”

Sellers fired back, “I’m going to finish because you’re being utterly disrespectful.”

“What I’m telling you is that there are people in this country that fought, died, and bled for the right to vote. Don’t be a d***, just understand —,” Sellers said, and O’Leary cut him off.

“I’m not a d***, I’m pointing something out to you. The Constitution is being upheld. Do you have a problem with that? Do you have a problem with the Constitution of the United States of America?” O’Leary said.

“That’s Mr. D*** to you, buddy,” O’Leary said over Sellers.

Sellers continued and said that black representation in the South remains inadequate, arguing that too few leaders who truly reflect and understand these communities are being sent to Congress to represent them.

O’Leary argued that voters still have access to a ballot box regardless.

‘Don’t be a d***’: CNN commentator clashes with Kevin O’Leary over redistricting

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