CNN host Don Lemon went on “The View” on Monday morning to bash former President Donald Trump, claiming that he exposed the United States as a racist country.
“You write something that might surprise some people, ‘In 2016 Donald Trump was exactly the president we deserved and probably the president needed.’ Maybe the beginning is true,” cohost Joy Behar said. “I don’t know about needed. Why do you say that.”
“I said it burns my tongue, I think that’s what I wrote,” Lemon replied. “Donald Trump was a symptom, as we’ve been saying. Racism and this sort of wackiness has been around forever.”
“Donald Trump was a symptom,” he added. ” I think he was— he was the— I said the perseverating ulcer or tumor that drove us into the oncologist’s office so we can have the problem diagnosed and excised.”
“I’m glad Donald Trump is behind us,” Lemon continued. “Listen, if you believe in policy and politics, I’m not a political person — there wasn’t much about policy that Donald Trump said or did or believed in or accomplished. Mostly what he did do is served to divide the country.”
“But he also exposed the racism and original sin of this country which is slavery and racism and Jim Crow,” he conceded. “We thought maybe we were in a post-racial era, and we weren’t. We were living a lie. Donald Trump, I hate to say it, he showed us the truth and showed us who many of our neighbors are, not all of them, many of them.”
During this same appearance, Lemon said that in order to end racism in this country, Americans need to stop teaching that Jesus was white.
“People ask me all the time, especially young mothers, young white mothers, they say what can I do? How can I fix this after George Floyd? I don’t have the vocabulary to teach my kids. What can I do?” he said.
“I thought about that and offered some advice,” Lemon explained. “That’s what the book is about. It’s one of the reasons I wrote the book. We have to start, as I said earlier in the show, we have to teach the true history of this country, the history that African-Americans brought to this country.”
“We have to start being realistic about God and the Bible,” he continued. “If you are a person of faith in this country, and we know America is built on faith and religious freedom, a good way of starting is to present the true identity of Jesus.”
“That is a black or brown person, rather than someone who looks like a white hippy from Sweden or Norway,” Lemon added. “We should start with that and put that in your home, either a Black Jesus or Brown Jesus. Jesus looked more like a Muslim or someone who is dark, rather than a blonde-looking carpenter.”
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“When your children ask you who is this, say this is Jesus,” the CNN host said. “Jesus does not look like the popular depiction we have in our churches and our homes, and we see all over the media. That is a good place to start.”
“That’s a good place that your kids will ask questions, and then you can go from there, and then we can — then we can come to a true reality about what America really is and then try to figure out how we fix this issue of racism in the country,” Lemon concluded. “It is a spell that must be broken.”