Don Lemon is once again using his post-CNN platform to cast President Donald Trumps supporters as the problem with America, while celebrating that he can now say whatever the f**k I want without corporate oversight.
During a recent appearance on The Bakari Sellers Show, the former CNN anchor described how leaving legacy media has changed his approach to commentary. According to Breitbart, Lemon told Sellers he had to untrain himself from habits formed during his years in corporate news, where he claims he constantly second-guessed his words before going on air.
I had to untrain myself from the things that I had learned in corporate media about thinking 85 times before I said something. I didnt have to do that. I could say whatever the f**k I want, Lemon said, framing his new venture as a liberation from standards he now derides. He went on to invoke Malcolm X while boasting about commentary he had delivered earlier that day, presenting himself as a truth-teller unbound by traditional journalistic constraints.
I could never do what I did today in corporate media by saying, Look, Im going to tell you I feel the spirit of Malcolm X coming over me when we talk about the ballot and the bullet. And Plymouth Rock, we didnt land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us,' Lemon said, borrowing the rhetoric of the radical 1960s activist. He then pivoted to a familiar theme, insisting that support for President Donald Trump is driven primarily by race rather than economics.
I could not tell people that this issue is a white people problem right now. This is not just rich against poor, because most people who voted for Donald Trump are not rich. These are white people, co-opted, poor, and working class white people who put this man in office, Lemon claimed, dismissing the legitimate economic and cultural grievances of millions of voters. He argued that such remarks would have drawn accusations of race-baiting at CNN, suggesting that corporate media still imposes some limits on overtly divisive rhetoric.
And if I had said that on corporate media, oh my gosh, youre a race baiter, anchors shouldnt be saying that. No, I say whatever I want and I tell the truth, Lemon said. And thats how we got here and thats why the Lemon Media Network, I believe, is growing.
Later in the interview, Lemon went further, urging Democrats to weaponize the legal system against Republicans if they regain the White House in 2028. Go after them, sue them, tie them up in lawsuits, make sure that theyre held accountable, he said, adding, I want my president to offend people, especially those people who believe in the wrong things.
Lemon has repeatedly framed politics through an explicitly racial lens since CNN fired him in 2023, often targeting President Trumps supporters as morally suspect. He told Bill Maher on Club Random that Trump supporters are really fking racist and that a person cannot be Black and be a rational MAGA person, and in October he even urged black and brown Americans to arm themselves against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
The escalation in rhetoric comes as Lemon faces his own legal troubles, with the Department of Justice charging him in January with conspiracy against the right of religious freedom and interfering with that right, stemming from a January 18 protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. His attorney, Abbe Lowell, has attempted to normalize Lemons conduct, insisting that his clients work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done, a claim that only underscores how central provocation and division have become to Lemons public persona.
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