Don Lemon says he thinks about running for office: ‘I could definitely run this country better than Donald Trump’
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The independent journalist weighed the proposition of a presidential run, saying “it could happen if the right opportunity presented itself.”
Don Lemon isn’t ruling out a presidential run.
The independent journalist said he could run the country better than the current president if he were to take office.
“So do I ever think about it?” Lemon told Alex Wagner on “Pod Save America.” “Yes. Could it happen? Yeah, it could happen, if the right opportunity presented itself.”
He added, “I know people are going to think I’m crazy. This is going to be the headline, and people are going to laugh about it: ‘I think I could be president of the United States.’ I could definitely run this country better than Donald Trump.”
He also told Wagner that the idea wasn’t so far-fetched, using former President Barack Obama as an example—”Did anybody think Barack Obama, as he says, ‘This guy with a funny name, from a mixed background’ that he would become president?” But he admitted that there were plenty of cons to opening himself to an opportunity like public office.
“Why would I invite that sort of even more criticism? I don’t want to ruin my life with people digging into everything about me and campaign ads [airing] everything that I’ve ever said that seemed controversial… But I don’t even think people would care about that. I’ve never said that I was gonna grab anybody by the p—y, right? But also, I’m not a white man, and the rules are different for me. And so just like the rules are, I believe, sadly, are different for women.”
An outspoken critic of President Trump, Lemon made headlines in January when he was arrested, along with other Black journalists, after covering an anti-ICE protest in Minneapolis, where demonstrators entered a church. The Department of Justice charged him under the 1994 Freedom to Access Clinical Entrances Act, or FACE Act.
Since the arrest, the former CNN anchor has promised he “will not be silenced” in the face of what many see as an intimidation tactic from the Trump camp. He argues that he acted within the rights granted to him as a journalist under the First Amendment.
“Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done,” his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement. “The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable.”