Former CNN anchor Don Lemon said Thursday that leaving corporate media has freed him to say whatever he wants, during an appearance on The Bakari Sellers Show.
Lemon told Sellers he had to break habits formed during his cable news career, describing a reflex to second-guess himself before speaking 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 didn’t have to do that. I could say whatever the f**k I want,” Lemon said.
The podcast host invoked the civil rights leader Malcolm X while describing commentary he had delivered earlier that day.
“I could never do what I did today in corporate media by saying, ‘Look, I’m 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 didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us,’” Lemon said.
He argued that support for President Donald Trump is a racial matter rather than an economic one.
“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.
The former anchor said the remark would have drawn accusations of race-baiting at CNN.
“And if I had said that on corporate media, oh my gosh, you’re a race baiter, anchors shouldn’t be saying that. No, I say whatever I want and I tell the truth,” Lemon said. “And that’s how we got here and that’s why the Lemon Media Network, I believe, is growing.”
Later in the same interview, Lemon urged Democrats to pursue Republicans through the courts should they retake the White House in 2028.
“Go after them, sue them, tie them up in lawsuits, make sure that they’re held accountable,” he said. “I want my president to offend people, especially those people who believe in the wrong things.”
Lemon has made race-framed arguments repeatedly since CNN fired him in 2023. He told Bill Maher on Club Random that Trump supporters are “really f—king racist” and that a person cannot be “Black and be a rational MAGA person.” In October, he urged black and brown Americans to arm themselves against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
The Department of Justice charged Lemon 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, said Lemon’s work in Minneapolis “was no different than what he has always done.”
