CNN fired Don Lemon three years ago for calling women past their prime.
Now he's calling himself the voice of Malcolm X.
And Don Lemon just told a podcast exactly what he was hiding from America for 17 years behind that CNN desk.
The Mask Comes All the Way Off
Lemon sat down with podcast host Bakari Sellers and did something he claims he could never do at CNN – said whatever he actually believed.
"I had to untrain myself from the things that I had learned in corporate media about thinking 85 times before I said something," Lemon said. "I could say whatever the f**k I want."
He then invoked Malcolm X – the separatist leader famous for his "ballot or the bullet" doctrine – to describe commentary he had delivered earlier that day.
"I could never do what I did today in corporate media by saying, 'Look, I'm going to tell you I feel the spirit of Malcolm X coming over me when we talk about the ballot and the bullet,'" Lemon said.
https://twitter.com/WesternLensman/status/2093314421607047387?s=20
That's the confession right there.
For 17 years, Don Lemon sat behind a CNN desk and pretended to be a journalist.
Every broadcast, every breaking news segment, every election night – he was performing. Filtering.
Suppressing whatever Malcolm X energy he was actually carrying into the studio.
The man America trusted to deliver the news was practicing self-censorship the entire time.
Then he explained what he actually thinks about the 77 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump in 2024.
"This issue is a white people problem right now," Lemon said. "These are white people, co-opted, poor, and working class white people who put this man in office."
He added that if he had said this on CNN, they would have called him a race baiter.
He's not wrong about that part.
A Federal Indictment and a Growing Platform
Don Lemon's reinvention didn't slow down when the Department of Justice charged him with federal civil rights crimes in January.
Federal agents arrested Lemon in Los Angeles – while he was in town to cover the Grammy Awards – on two felony counts: conspiring to violate the religious freedom rights of worshipers and using force to interfere with those rights.
The charges grew out of a January 18 protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, where one of the pastors also serves as the ICE field director for the region.
DOJ prosecutors say Lemon entered the church alongside demonstrators who stormed the service and that he personally obstructed church members.
Lemon claims he was there as a journalist.
He has pleaded not guilty.
His attorney has since filed a motion to dismiss on "vindictive prosecution" grounds – arguing that Trump's documented hostility toward Lemon drove the charges rather than the facts.
https://twitter.com/TexasTrump2024/status/2094058725166191004?s=20
But Lemon's legal jeopardy hasn't quieted him.
He used the same Bakari Sellers interview to urge Democrats to go after Republicans through the courts if they retake the White House in 2028.
"Go after them, sue them, tie them up in lawsuits, make sure that they're held accountable," he said. "I want my president to offend people, especially those people who believe in the wrong things."
The man facing federal charges for disrupting a church service wants Democrats to weaponize the courts against their political opponents.
Let that settle in.
This Is Who They Always Were
Don Lemon's post-CNN transformation isn't a transformation at all.
This is the real Don Lemon – the one corporate media kept locked in a box with a salary and a teleprompter.
The one who called Trump supporters "really f—king racist" on Bill Maher's podcast.
The one who urged black and brown Americans to arm themselves against ICE agents.
The one who told viewers you cannot be "Black and be a rational MAGA person."
That's not a fired anchor going rogue.
https://twitter.com/TwitchyTeam/status/2093907812925714452?s=20
That's a man finally saying out loud what he was whispering behind the scenes for two decades.
And that raises the question every conservative should be asking right now: How many Don Lemons are still behind those desks?
The corporate media complex didn't produce one biased anchor. It produced an entire class of them – people who filtered their actual beliefs for ratings and paychecks, who learned to run every take through the "will this get me fired" filter before it reached the air.
CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS. Somewhere right now, there's a version of Don Lemon counting to 85 before speaking.
Waiting for the right moment to invoke their own version of Malcolm X.
The only difference between Lemon then and Lemon now is that CNN isn't writing the check anymore.
Sources:
- Mariane Angela, "Don Lemon Says He Feels 'Spirit of Malcolm X' Now He's Free of CNN," Breitbart, August 28, 2026.
- Fox News Staff, "Don Lemon calls Trump base 'really f—king racist,' says Black MAGA supporters aren't rational," Fox News, 2024.
- Courthouse News Service, "Journalist Don Lemon pleads not guilty to federal charges over Minnesota church protest," February 13, 2026.
- The Hill, "Don Lemon asks judge to dismiss Minnesota church charges, cites vindictive prosecution," August 2026.
- Forbes, "Don Lemon Fired By CNN After 17 Years: A Timeline Of His Controversies," April 25, 2023.