Chris Cuomo: I Wouldn’t Have Done What Don Lemon Did
NewsNation host Chris Cuomo, a former CNN host, reacted to the arrest of Don Lemon.
CHRIS CUOMO, NEWSNATION HOST: And here is the last point, which is the personal part, which I’m sure all of you guys are going to want the most and the most people will pass it around. I don’t want to have to defend Don Lemon. I don’t want him to have anything bad come his way. And yeah, we used to be close. Now we’re not. And there’s good reason for that. But it doesn’t change my disposition. Two reasons. One, I try very hard not to be like what I oppose, what I am against, or what I didn’t like when it was done to me. So I try to treat people better than they treat me. Second, I don’t want to see bad things happen to people. And this is a bad thing. It may make them money, may make them a martyr. At the end of the day, it may wind up exploding his relevance and his resonance. Thanks to President Trump, ironic. But it’s scary having the federal government come after you, even with a case that seems kind of fugazi, in my opinion. You can think what he did was wrong and that he pushed the boundaries too much and did things that aren’t good practices. It doesn’t make it a federal crime, let alone under the Ku Klux Klan. But I wouldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t have done it the way he did it, and I wouldn’t have done it for the reasons he did it. And that’s my choice. And it would also be the choice of my employer. But even if I were there just with the Chris Cuomo podcast, the Chris Cuomo project, or for Sirius XM or for NewsNation, I don’t think they would let me do it. And I don’t think I would have done it my way, myself that way. And that’s I think that’s why there was no other real media there with this. But 90 percent conviction rate. Most people plead guilty because they’re afraid of what happens if they go to trial against the federal government. That’s scary. And I don’t like to see people in scary situations, especially when it’s not just Don Lemon. It’s about how we protect the press or choose not to and when we do one or the other. Those are really scary questions. But no, I’m not happy about seeing Don Lemon in a bad way. And it doesn’t matter to me if he would feel the same way about me. That’s not how I live my life. And I would suggest no one should.
