On his CNN program Tuesday night, Don Lemon explained his behavior in a viral clip in which he, GOP strategist Rick Wilson, and CNN commentator Wajahat Ali melted into a laughing fit over the Donald Trump’s ignorance of geography.
The three were discussing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent chewing-out of an NPR reporter over her grilling about Ukraine.
Said Wilson: “He’s just trying to demean her, and obviously it’s false. He also knows that deep in his heart that Donald Trump couldn’t find Ukraine on the map if you had the letter ‘U’ and the picture of an actual, physical crane next to it. He knows that this is an administration defined by ignorance of the world. That’s partly him playing to their base and playing to their audience of the credulous boomer rube demo that backs Donald Trump that wants to think that Donald Trump is the smart one and y’all elitists are dumb.“
Said Lemon on his show Tuesday: “This is personally important to me to address this. Ask anyone who knows me. They’ll tell you: I don’t believe in belittling people … for who they are, for what they believe or where they’re from. … in the moment I found that joke humorous and I didn’t catch everything that was said. Just to make this clear, I was laughing at the joke and not at any group of people.”
