Don Lemon is fed up.
On Thursday night’s episode of CNN Tonight, the anchor addressed The Washington Post‘s report about President Donald Trump referring to Haiti, El Salvador and African places as “shithole countries.”
Trump, in an attempt to explain his rationale for rescinding the deportation protection of 60,000 Haitian immigrants placed here after deadly earthquakes in 2010 —once again— showed his true colors with offensive rhetoric. “Why do we need more Haitians?” Trump said, “Take them out.”
He went on to suggest that America should bring in immigrants from places like Norway, “who can contribute to our society,” as expounded upon by White House spokesman Raj Shah.
Naturally, Lemon opened up his show addressing the controversy.
“The president of the United States is racist,” Lemon began. “All of us already knew that.”
Adding, “Those comments are frankly disgusting. There’s other language I’d like to use, but we are on television. But you know what, they’re not shocking, not even really surprising because this is who Donald Trump is—this is what he thinks.”
In the same show, Lemon cut off Trump’s former presidential campaign co-chair, John Fredericks when he attempted to claim that the issue wasn’t about race. Fredericks called Lemon “lazy” for labeling Trump’s remarks racist.
“Can we cut him off? Can we take him off the screen?,” Lemon requested. “I was going to let him speak until you doubly insulted me. I don’t even need to respond to the ‘lazy’ comment.”
The anchor closed the show by saying: “All of you who over the last few years have uttered that tired, lazy, uninformed, uneducated response of calling me and others who point out racist behavior ‘racists,’ you know what you can go do? I can’t say that,” he said after a long pause. “But you can go read a history book. Because you might learn that people from some of those ‘shithole countries’ were slaves who were brought by force to help build this country.”
Over the course of Trump’s campaign and tenure in office, the CNN anchor has become less P.C. about his coverage of the White House. Once criticized for his conservative approach to news coverage on Black issues, Lemon has officially let his guard down, choosing instead to be more frank about socio-political issues —especially after Trump called him “the dumbest man on television.”
With all that said, Lemon is officially re-invited to the cookout. He can even bring Tupperware for leftovers. In these times, the country desperately needs honest reporting and Lemon is giving us just that.