Former CNN anchor Don Lemon sat down on the "Can't Be Censored" podcast with hosts Karman Wong and Travis Dhanraj and compared 75 million American voters to the Nazi Party. Then he added a caveat so bizarre it deserves its own museum exhibit.
MAGA is "America's version" of the Nazi Party, Lemon explained — just "without the Holocaust and all that stuff."
"Without the Holocaust and all that stuff." That's roughly six million Jewish men, women, and children systematically exterminated by a totalitarian regime. "All that stuff." Like he's waving off a parking ticket.
Lemon told Wong and Dhanraj that the MAGA movement was the "closest" thing anyone had seen to Nazism. He then elaborated on why tens of millions of Americans support President Donald Trump, offering this gem: "They've been co-opted by many people in the Republican Party and Donald Trump to think that their failures are due to something else."
So the man who was fired from CNN is now explaining to a podcast audience that working-class voters who want lower gas prices and a secure border have been "co-opted." By a guy they voluntarily elected. Twice.
Lemon did acknowledge Trump was not orchestrating a genocide like Nazi Germany. Which raises a fairly obvious question: if there's no genocide, no concentration camps, no territorial invasion of neighboring countries, no secret police dragging families from their homes at midnight — what exactly is the comparison?
It's the word. That's it. Lemon doesn't have an argument. He has a word — "Nazi" — and he's hoping the emotional weight of it does the work his logic can't. Strip away the shock value and what you're left with is a former cable news host calling a democratic political movement fascist because its voters disagree with him.
The "all that stuff" phrasing is what elevates this from standard cable news hysteria to something genuinely offensive. Holocaust survivors — the ones still alive — didn't endure "all that stuff." They endured systematic, industrialized murder. Reducing it to a throwaway clause in a podcast comparison trivializes the single worst atrocity of the 20th century, and it does so in service of a political cheap shot.
Defenders will say Lemon was being nuanced. He was drawing a limited comparison. He specifically excluded the genocide. But that's exactly the problem. You don't get to invoke Nazis, subtract the thing that defined them, and pretend you've made a serious point. That's like comparing someone to a bank robber — "but without the robbery and all that stuff." Congratulations, you've just described a person standing in a bank.
Lemon was let go from CNN in 2023 after a string of on-air controversies and reported workplace issues. He briefly launched a YouTube show, then bounced to the podcast circuit, where apparently the only way to stay relevant is to say something so inflammatory it trends for a news cycle.
Seventy-five million Americans voted for Donald Trump. They're teachers, plumbers, veterans, nurses, small business owners. They showed up, cast a ballot, and went back to work the next day. That's not Nazism. That's democracy.
But "without the Holocaust and all that stuff" — that's not analysis either. That's a man who ran out of things to say about five podcasts ago.
