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.”
Kyle Griffin’s first foray into the world of news was serving as the anchor for his high school’s morning announcements program. But the then-teenager quickly realized that being an on-air personality was not for him.
“I saw at my local NBC affiliate that while the anchors and reporters were great, they were reading someone else’s words, and I wanted to be the person who wrote those words,” says Griffin. “I wanted to write the news.”
Griffin got his wish. A veteran of Seven Network Limited, NBC News Yahoo!, and the Albany, New York-based NBC affiliate WNYT, he’s currently the executive producer of MSNBC’s The Weekend, the network’s Saturday and Sunday morning news show, which launched earlier this year.
Former First Lady Melania Trump will host a fundraiser for the gay conservative political group Log Cabin Republicans. It will be her first major political event of the year.
The fundraiser is set for April 20 at Mar-a-Lago, the resort where the Trumps reside. It will launch the Trump organization's "Road to Victory" program, which seeks to target swing-state voters.
Melania Trump has maintained a longstanding relationship with the Log Cabin Republicans, which endorsed her husband's 2020 bid and whose leaders have been among the former president's most stalwart defenders.
On my last day of junior high, my stepfather, my mother and I packed up the cars and drove south from Northern Virginia to Pasco County, Florida. The cultural adjustments were significant in both number and magnitude. For example, when we moved into Embassy Hills, I was 14 and easily the youngest person on our flat Florida block of single-story stucco homes. I believe my mother, at 52, was the youngest adult.
Prior to Pasco, my experience with very old adults had been limited mostly to senior relatives at family gatherings. My stepfather's retirement, however, put me squarely in their world. Early bird dinners, senior discounts, and mall walkers became fixtures in my new life.
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