Former CNN host Don Lemon says he'll run for president if the people want him, even with federal civil rights charges pending from a Minneapolis church incident.
Don Lemon told the Uncloseted podcast he is weighing a presidential campaign and put the odds of a future bid at 65 to 70 percent. The fired CNN host did not name a party or an election year. He framed the choice as journalism versus higher office.
Breitbart News reported the 60-year-old's remarks from his appearance with host Spencer Macnaughton. Lemon cast the idea as a response to public demand rather than a locked-in plan.
He put it plainly.
"If the people want me, I’ll do it."
That line sat beside a more cautious one. Lemon said he never says never, then pointed to a full plate of current work. He also said he understands what his platform means to culture and society.
Lemon described an internal debate. He said the work of running the country would demand full-time devotion. He said he would rather pour much of his time into journalism. At the same time, he claimed he could outdo Donald Trump in the job.
"I think I could be a better president than Donald Trump... But it is a daunting undertaking to run for president in this country because you’d have to be devoted to it full-time. And I would like to devote much of my time to journalism."
He went further on the fork in the road.
"It makes me wonder my best way of being and operating in this society, whether it is through journalism or if it is through becoming the president of the United States."
No campaign committee, no ballot filing, and no election cycle appeared in his comments. The source material around the interview noted he could be thinking years ahead. Lemon himself left the calendar blank.
The same reporting tied Lemon to a more concrete record earlier this year in Minneapolis. Protesters stormed Cities Church in the middle of a service. Lemon went live on YouTube from the scene. He said he was not part of the group and was there as a journalist photographing the event.
Authorities arrested him and charged him with federal civil rights crimes. Those charges remain pending. Breitbart covered the arrest and the church episode in January. The case status has not changed in the account of his recent podcast talk.
Lemon presented the Minneapolis outing as journalism. Federal prosecutors presented it as something else. Voters who might someday hear a Lemon-for-president pitch would also hear that unfinished docket.
He still talks as if the country may draft him. He still faces a live federal case born from a disrupted church service. Ambition is easy to announce on a podcast. Accountability in court is not.
Talk of saving the country lands softer when the speaker still has to answer for how he covered a house of worship under siege.
