in As Seen On TV, So That Happened

CNN’s Don Lemon Just Unleashed On President Trump—And We’re Into It

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Yesterday, Trump did something that CNN called “his new rock bottom,” because so many times in the past year and a half we’ve all been fooled into thinking we’ve already hit rock bottom already, only for the president to take us to a brand new low we never even could have imagined. But Trump has now truly reached epically low levels of grossness and unpresidentiality (at least until something else happens).

On Thursday, Trump held a meeting with some members of Congress to work out some immigration reform measures that both sides of the political spectrum could be happy with. A bipartisan plan led by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (D-South Carolina) called for cutting the visa lottery by 50 percent, and all those newly created leftover visas go to Temporary Protective Status and underrepresented areas, like Haiti and some countries in Africa, respectively. When Trump heard this he said, according to witnesses:

“Why are we having all these people from sh*thole counties come here?” the president of the United States said. He also wondered why we can’t attract more immigrants from places like Norway.

Trivia quiz: What do Haiti and Africa have in common, and how does that differ from Norway? If you guessed “populated primarily by people with dark skin,” and “people from Norway are mostly white,” you would be correct. So yeah, the president just openly lets racist garbage like this fly out of his mouth. You will recall that not too long ago, Trump said that everyone coming to the U.S. from Haiti has AIDS. Classy, classy stuff.

As per usual, the post-crisis gaslighting machine kicked in, which included Trump tweeting a denial that he never said anything bad about Haitians at all, but that he did use “tough” language.

Millions of people are rightfully aghast and enraged by Trump’s terrible remarks. One of those people is CNN anchor Don Lemon. An outspoken critic of Trump in the past (and definitely one of the reasons why Trump hates CNN and calls it fake news), he let loose on the president last night. He opened CNN Tonight on Thursday with the line, “This is CNN Tonight. I’m Don Lemon. The president of the United States is racist.” (It’s kind of like the old “I’m Chevy Chase and you’re not” bit from SNL’s “Weekend Update,” except it’s about how the president says racist things.) “A lot of us already knew that,” Lemon quipped.

Lemon proceeded to deliver a sharp and blistering editorial about why Trump’s words were so awful. A taste:

“Apparently we have to go through this repertoire every time he says something like this. This is a man who, in an Oval Office meeting last year said Nigerian immigrants should go back to their huts. All Haitian immigrants have AIDS. The man who based his entire political career for years on the racist birther lie that President Barack Obama was born in Africa. A man who reportedly still believes that to this day. He started his campaign trashing Mexicans…The man who responded to protests by black NFL players by calling them sons of b*tches. This is a man who today complained about immigrants who ‘Are from sh*thole countries.’”

Lemon continued:

“For years, I and others have been trying to tell you, the American people, that this man was exhibiting bigoted behavior. I asked him about it a number of times but he denied it. Kept up the racist rhetoric during the campaign and now in the White House. His supporters continue to make excuses for him. Some of them I know. Some of his friends I can hear them telling me ‘Oh, Don, he didn’t mean that. It was taken out of context, I’m not sure.’ He is a racist.

Lemon perfectly surmised the feelings of many, and they showed their support on Twitter.