CNN anchor Don Lemon has claimed that Donald Trump once told him he was racist.
Lemon made the claim on-air during The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. He said that Trump accused him of racism during an interview in 2011.
“The last time I interviewed Donald Trump, before he ran for office, was the night that Osama Bin Laden was killed,” Lemon said, adding that he and Trump had “a row about the birther issue.”
Trump maintained for years that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, despite zero evidence to support his claims. He offered a non-apology during a press conference in September 2016, where he instead falsely claimed that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton started the birther conspiracy during her 2008 presidential campaign.
Last year, the New York Times claimed that Trump had once again been questioning whether President Obama was born in the United States.
Lemon apparently challenged Trump on his beliefs during their 2011 interview.
“He had vowed that he would never do an interview with me because he said I was racist, because I challenged him on an in-factual statement, a lie,” Lemon said. “[He said] that I was racist because of the way that I challenged him. Much in the way that he thought that I can’t be unbiased about an issue concerning race, like Judge [Gonzalo] Curiel, because I’m African-American. So he accused me of being racist.”
It’s a surprising accusation from Trump, even seven years ago, given his own actions and statements have been perceived as sufficiently racist to justify multiple listsdocumenting his racism — and even a Wikipedia page dedicated to his “racial views.”
Examples include: Trump being sued in 1973 after trying to avoid renting apartments to African-Americans; his leading role in the birther movement; his retweeting of white supremacists; last year calling those who marched alongside white supremacists “very fine people”; referring to a Hispanic Miss Universe winner as “Miss Housekeeping;”; referring to Mexican immigrants as “rapists”; and angrily shouting about immigrants from “shithole countries.”
Trump recently attacked Lemon on Twitter after the CNN anchor interviewed NBA star LeBron James. Lemon asked James what he would say to Trump if he were sitting across from him.
“I would never sit across from him,” James responded, adding, “I’d sit across from Barack though.”
Trump, ever the fragile ego, lashed out on Twitter: “Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do.”
Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike!
Lemon clapped back in an incredible 9-minute segment on CNN Tonight, deconstructing Trump’s various attacks on people of color and women.
He also referenced Trump’s attacks on his and James’ intelligence, noting that “referring to African-Americans as dumb is one of the oldest canards of racism in this country.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to enforce a policy mandating that U.S. passports list a traveler’s sex as assigned at birth, based on biological characteristics.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring that the U.S. government would recognize only two sexes, effectively erasing transgender identity. The order, which pledged to uphold "the biological reality of sex," directed the State Department to revise its passport policies to "accurately reflect the holder's sex."
U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson, one of several Democrats targeted in Texas's latest gerrymander, says she will seek reelection after a federal three-judge panel blocked a Republican-backed congressional map that would have drawn her out of her Dallas-area district for 2026.
The lesbian congresswoman is one of five Texas Democrats whose districts were reshaped to give Republicans a 2026 edge, and among several Democrats who were effectively drawn out of the seats they currently represent.
In Johnson's case, the proposed map would have stretched her Dallas-based 32nd District into Republican-leaning Rockwall County and rural East Texas, while shifting her hometown of Farmers Branch into GOP Rep. Beth Van Duyne's 24th District, a seat Trump won by 16 points in 2024.
Justine Lindsay, the NFL's first out transgender cheerleader, recently revealed that she was fired this year, a decision she alleges was motivated by transphobia and Donald Trump's election as president.
"I was cut because I'm trans," Lindsay said in an Instagram Live with Gaye Magazine. "I don't wanna hear nobody saying, 'She didn't wanna come back.' Why the hell would I not wanna come back to an organization that I've been a part of for three years? That makes no sense to me. So I was cut. I was devastated. It stung. I was hurt."
Lindsay, who made history as the NFL's first transgender cheerleader when she tried out and made the Carolina Panthers's TopCats squad in 2022, told the magazine that her teammates "know the truth" about the decision to cut her from the squad.
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