Former CNN host Don Lemon inflamed the Black community this week but won praise from conservatives following an interview with Jen Psaki on MSNBC, where he questioned the viability of Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy and cast doubt on polls showing her leading former President Donald Trump.
Lemon, known for his controversial opinions and past outspoken criticism of Trump, sat down Monday with the host of “Inside With Jen Psaki” to discuss conversations he recently had with Black voters who surprisingly support Trump.
Lemon claimed he spoke to many Black voters who were unfamiliar with Harris and intended to vote for Trump, believing he is “on Black people’s side” because they thought he might provide another stimulus check if reelected, despite Trump not having made any such promise.
“I don’t know if it was surprising, but it was certainly eye-opening to hear so many people, even people of color and women, saying they are going to support Donald Trump,” Lemon said before casting doubt on recent polls that showed Harris pulling ahead in the race for the White House.
Lemon filmed his own interviews on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey, confirming his reportage, but he faced criticism from many Black voices who said Lemon was grasping at straws and struggling to stay relevant after being fired from CNN in April 2023.
“My, how the mighty have fallen,” wrote @delinthecity_. “Remember when mainstream news mocked content creators and influencers? Now, Don Lemon, formerly of CNN, is on the street doing content creator-style interviews, asking people if they support Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.”
Another user, @JennyBGoodX, said Lemon was “clinging on for dear life.”
“Let’s be realistic, he could have fished that boardwalk all day and night and gotten probably all the answers he wanted,” said X user SausageMcBigot. “He actually published both sides, despite making it clear he is still on his own side.”
On the right, however, Lemon’s interview with Psaki provided red meat for conservative operatives and conspiracy theorists, who raced to share video clips of Lemon on their social media channels while alleging, without evidence, that the polls were being manipulated to favor Harris.
“This is what I mean when I say Kamala’s popularity is manufactured,” wrote @BehizyTweets, a verified user on the platform X. “How can she be surging when her most engaged voter base (Black people) don’t know anything about her? It’s all a facade and some are falling for it.”
Other Republican talking heads piled on in the comments section, using Lemon’s remarks to disparage Harris and praise Trump.
“It’s shocking to people when they find out Trump has actually done more for black communities than the current administration,” wrote @USACannibal, who didn’t link to any receipts.
Lemon, who occasionally appears on national news programs, continues to be a respected figure in the media despite his tendency toward subjective reporting throughout his long career as a political commentator.
“I am not quite sure that the polls are accurate as it relates to the tightening of the polls and who will support whom,” Lemon told the host, igniting a virtual feeding frenzy among Trump supporters, who attacked Harris viciously on social media.
Meanwhile, Psaki seemed taken aback by Lemon’s current remarks about the GOP nominee when compared to Lemon’s scathing condemnations of Trump after he was elected in 2016.
At the time, Lemon had his own primetime show, “CNN Tonight with Don Lemon,” where he basically raked Trump over the coals every weeknight, delivering harsh commentary throughout Trump’s presidency.
After Trump left office, Lemon’s ratings plummeted, and eventually, his show was canceled. From there, he became co-anchor of “CNN This Morning” before he was fired last year after 17 years with the network.
Earlier this year, Lemon announced a new show on X called “The Don Lemon Show.” X owner and billionaire executive Elon Musk was the show’s first guest. However, after the interview was filmed, Musk reportedly canceled the show before it aired.
Following the fiasco, Lemon launched the “Don Lemon Show,” aka “Lemon Live at 5,” on YouTube, with a prime-time news format, where he borrows snippets from his old network to make his points.
His latest broadcast on Aug. 28 was titled “Will Black Women Save Democracy,” which featured an interview with LaTosha Brown of Black Voters Matter.
Back at the segment with Psaki, Lemon went on to describe his interviews with Black voters and his travels through key swing states, which Harris began touring this week in an effort to gain rural support.
Despite positive economic metrics supporting Harris in the race, Lemon claimed that many Black voters told him they were planning to vote for Trump based solely on the 2021 stimulus check they received with Trump’s signature on it, saying Black people were ready to “vote with their wallets.”
“There were a lot of Black men, Jen, who said they were supporting Donald Trump simply because he gave them a stimulus check,” Lemon explained. “He gave them $1,200 back when he was president. They did not somehow remember that the current president also gave them a stimulus check, except his name wasn’t on it,” he added, referring to the incumbent, Joe Biden.
Lemon said he repeatedly reminded Black voters that the stimulus check did not originate with Trump but was issued by a Democratic Congress, with Trump delaying its distribution to add his signature.
“So, when they got the check, and his name was on it, they automatically thought it came directly from Donald Trump, which I think is good marketing,” Lemon said. “Which is the same as he does for buildings around the country, especially in New York. He doesn’t actually own them, but he puts his name on them, and it makes people think he owns them, and it makes them think that he is richer and bigger and more benevolent than he is.”
At this point, Psaki shifted the focus to Harris, asking Lemon for insights on how voters view the Democratic nominee compared to Trump.
“For the most part, in Pittsburgh, or the Jersey Shore, in Ohio, many people did not know who she was. They were not familiar with her,” Lemon said before eagerly turning his attention back to Trump. “With him, they thought that he’s better for the economy. That he brought money into the community, that he was on Black people’s side.”
Lemon, however, pointed out that many of the reasons voters cited for supporting Trump were based on misinformation.
“I have been doing this long enough that you never know where people are going to fall and how they will vote,” he said. “That’s their personal prerogative. But I think it’s important for them to understand and go to the voting booth with some knowledge that they are informed as an electorate. And for other reasons they were telling me, the information was all false. They didn’t understand the correct reasons why they might vote for him.”
The host then reminded Lemon of his previous statements calling Trump “a racist on television” and asked whether the people he spoke with shared that view.
Lemon didn’t argue, noting that he had repeatedly criticized Trump for “lying”: “Of course, I think he is racist. Look at his rhetoric and his track record, and anyone can see that,” he replied. Lemon then questioned why so many in the Black community support Trump, suggesting that people are more focused on “how much or how little money they had in their pockets.”
Throughout the interview, Lemon repeatedly presented his theory about Trump’s support among a small sample of Black voters (whom he interviewed) as representative of the broader sentiment within the entire Black community across America.
Lemon then suggested that Black voters were ignoring Trump’s record and supporting him just to get another stimulus check.
“We talk about low-information voters. I like to call them low-partisan-information voters because many of the people I spoke to were not sitting in front of the television every single day and every single night following every micro-breaking news development about Donald Trump and what’s happening in politics,” Lemon said.
Both during and after his presidency, Trump has continued to perpetuate dog whistles and purposely stoke racial tensions on the campaign trail to rile up his supporters.
Previously, he lashed out at Black judicial officials overseeing his many criminal and civil cases, making them targets of his never-ending political grievances.
In the middle of Black History Month, Trump ignited another such firestorm after he described President Biden as “a very nasty and vicious racist” during a speech at the annual Black Conservative Federation gala in South Carolina.
After the speech, Vice President Harris wasted no time excoriating Trump for pandering to the Black community, calling him hypocritical and disingenuous.
“The audacity of Donald Trump to speak to a room full of Black voters during Black History Month as if he isn’t the proud poster boy for modern racism,” Harris fumed. “This is the same man who falsely accused the Central Park 5, questioned George Floyd’s humanity, compared his own impeachment trial to being lynched, and ensured the unemployment gap for Black workers spiked during his presidency.”
