CNN host Don Lemon claimed during an interview with PBS' Margaret Hoover he does not do opinion on his weeknight show because he offers a "point of view" that is based on facts.
"When you interject that emotion, and you call the United — the president of the United States a con man, how is that different from the emotion that Fox News interjects when they’re covering Biden?" Hoover asked.
“Yeah, well — because I’m coming from a place of truth because when I say that the president of the United States is racist, I went on after that to give the evidence, right? I could have started — I probably did — with the housing-discrimination lawsuit that he and his father faced. I could have done the Central Park Five or the Exonerated Five. I think I probably went on to talk about his role in birtherism. And so I gave the evidence of that," Lemon replied.
"When I say that the president of the United States is a fraud and a con, that was looking at his taxes and how he — and his history of litigation and not paying people. These are all facts. I don’t do opinion. And I know — the difference for me is, I do point of view," he added.
That "point of view," Lemon said, is "an American, as a black man who happens to be gay."
"I also represent CNN. And so I must tell the truth. And if I don’t, if my facts are wrong, then I have to clarify it, and I have to come on television, and I have to apologize, and I say, ‘I got that wrong.’ So that is a difference between what I’m doing and what someone, as you mentioned, over at Fox News is doing. I’m operating from a place of truth," Lemon continued. "It’s all based in fact, and it’s all based on the evidence that’s out there."