Don Lemon Faces Backlash From Black Community, Accused Of Struggling To Stay Relevant After Controversial Comments About Kamala Harris

Former CNN anchor Don Lemon stirred up trouble within the black community this week but gained praise from conservatives after an interview with Jen Psaki on MSNBC by which he questioned the legitimacy of Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy and solid doubt on polls that show her ahead of former President Donald Trump.

Lemon, known for his controversial opinions and former outspoken criticism of Trump, sat down with “Inside With Jen Psaki” host on Monday to debate conversations he’s had recently with black voters who, surprisingly, support Trump.

Lemon claimed he spoke with many black voters who were unfamiliar with Harris and intended to vote for Trump, believing he was “on the side of black people” because they thought he could provide one other stimulus check if re-elected, despite Trump making no such promise.

“I don’t know if it was surprising, but it was definitely eye-opening to hear so many people, even people of color and women, saying they’re going to support Donald Trump,” Lemon said, before questioning recent polls that showed Harris leading the race for the White House.

Lemon taped his own interviews on the Atlantic City, New Jersey, boardwalk, which supports the veracity of his reporting, but he drew criticism from many black individuals who said Lemon was grasping at straws and struggling to remain relevant after being fired from CNN in April 2023.

“Oh my God, how the mighty have fallen” he wrote @delinthecity_. “Remember when mainstream news used to make fun of content creators and influencers? Now, former CNN employee Don Lemon is out on the streets doing content creator-style interviews, asking people if they support Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.”

Another user, @JennyBGoodX, said Lemon was “clinging to life.”

“Let’s be realistic, he could have fished on that boardwalk all day and night and probably gotten all the answers he wanted,” user X SausageMcBigot said. “He actually posted both sides, even though he made it clear he was still on his side.”

Lemon’s interview with Psaki, in turn, provided fodder for conservative activists and conspiracy theorists, who raced to share videos of Lemon on their social media channels while claiming without evidence that polls were being rigged to favor Harris.

“This is what I mean when I say Kamala’s popularity is fake” he wrote @BehizyTweets, verified X user. “How can she grow so fast when her most engaged base (black voters) knows nothing about her? It’s all a facade and some people are falling for it.”

In the comments section, other Republican pundits seized on Lemon’s remarks to discredit Harris and praise Trump.

“People are shocked to learn that Trump has done more for the black community than the current administration,” @USACannibal wrote, without providing any links to the bills.

Lemon, who occasionally appears on national news programs, continues to command respect within the media despite a bent toward biased reporting that has plagued him throughout his long profession as a political commentator.

“I’m not entirely sure if the polls are accurate in terms of the tightening of the polls and who’s going to support who,” Lemon told the host, sparking a virtual frenzy amongst Trump supporters who fiercely attacked Harris on social media.

Psaki, meanwhile, appeared surprised by Lemon’s recent comments in regards to the GOP nominee once they were in comparison with Lemon’s withering criticism of Trump following his election in 2016.

At the time, Lemon had his own prime-time show, “CNN Tonight with Don Lemon,” on which he blasted Trump almost every night, delivering sharp commentary on his presidency.

After Trump left office, Lemon’s rankings plummeted, and his show was eventually canceled. From there, he became a co-host of “CNN This Morning” before being fired last yr after 17 years on the network.

Earlier this yr, Lemon announced a brand new show on X called “The Don Lemon Show.” X owner and billionaire Elon Musk was the show’s first guest. However, after taping the interview, Musk reportedly canceled the show before it aired.

Following the disaster, Lemon launched the Don Lemon Show on YouTube, also often known as Lemon Live at 5, a prime-time news format by which he borrowed clips from his old station to present his views.

His last show on August 28 was titled “Will Black Women Save Democracy” and featured an interview with LaTosha Brown of Black Voters Matter.

Returning to the segment with Psaki, Lemon described his interviews with black voters and travels through key battleground states, where Harris began traveling this week in an effort to drum up support in rural areas.

Despite positive economic indicators favoring Harris within the race, Lemon claimed that many Black voters told him they planned to vote for Trump solely due to stimulus check they received in 2021 with Trump’s signature, stating that Black individuals are willing to “vote with their wallets.”

“There were a lot of black men, Jen, who said they supported Donald Trump simply because he gave them a stimulus check,” Lemon explained. “He gave them $1,200 when he was president. They didn’t remember that the current president also gave them a stimulus check, it’s just that his name wasn’t on it,” he added, referring to the incumbent President, Joe Biden.

Lemon said he has repeatedly reminded Black voters that the stimulus check was not issued by Trump but by a Democratic Congress, and Trump delayed its release so he could sign it.

“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. “The same thing he does with buildings all over the country, especially in New York. He doesn’t actually own them, but he puts his name on them, which makes people think they own them, and that makes them think he’s richer, bigger, more charitable than he is.”

At that time, Psaki turned her attention to Harris, asking Lemon for her tackle how voters view the Democratic nominee in comparison with Trump.

“In most cases in Pittsburgh or the Jersey Shore, Ohio, a lot of people didn’t know who she was. They weren’t familiar with her,” Lemon said, before turning his attention back to Trump with gusto. “They thought he was better for the economy. That he brought money into the community. That he stood with black people.”

But Lemon noted that most of the reasons voters supported Trump were based on misinformation.

“I’ve been doing this long enough that you never know where people are going to be and how they’re going to vote,” he said. “That’s their personal prerogative. But I think it’s important that they understand and go to the polls with some knowledge that they’re informed about as voters. And for other reasons that they told me, all the information was false. They didn’t understand the actual reasons why they could vote for him.”

The host reminded Lemon of his earlier statements by which he called Trump a “racist on TV” and asked if the people he spoke to shared that view.

Lemon didn’t argue, noting that he’s repeatedly criticized Trump for “lying”: “Of course, I think he’s a racist. You look at his rhetoric and his history, and everyone can see that,” he replied. Lemon then asked why so many individuals within the black community support Trump, suggesting that folks are more concerned with “how much or how little money they have in their pockets.”

During the interview, Lemon repeatedly presented his theory about support for Trump among the many small group of black voters he interviewed as representative of the broader sentiment of the whole black community in America.

Lemon then suggested that black voters are ignoring Trump’s achievements and only supporting him to get one other stimulus check.

“We’re talking about low-information voters. I like to call them low-partisan information voters because a lot of the people I talked to weren’t sitting in front of the TV every day and every night following every micro-event about Donald Trump and what was happening in politics,” Lemon said.

Both during and after his presidency, Trump continued to spread rumors and deliberately stoked racial tensions through the election campaign to enrage his supporters.

He has previously sharply criticized black court officials who oversee his quite a few criminal and civil cases, making them targets of his limitless political grievances.

During Black History Month, Trump sparked one other firestorm when he called President Biden a “very nasty and vicious racist” during a speech on the South Carolina Federation of Black Conservatives’ annual gala.

Following her speech, Vice President Harris wasted no time in criticizing Trump for pandering to the black community, calling him a hypocrite and insincere.

“The audacity of Donald Trump to address a room full of Black voters during Black History Month as if he were not the proud poster boy of 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 a lynching, and drove unemployment among Black workers higher during his presidency.”