Don Lemon Insists He Wasn't Laughing At Trump Supporters During CNN Segment

Don Lemon is addressing accusations that he mocked Trump supporters  during a CNN segment this past weekend.

At the end of his broadcast on Tuesday, Lemon spoke about the now-viral video of a discussion with New York Times contributing op-ed writer Wajahat Ali and GOP strategist Rick Wilson :

One final note that I have for you, because this is personally important to me to address this. Anyone — ask anyone who knows me. They’ll tell you I don’t believe in belittling people belittling anyone for who they are, for what they believe or where they’re from.

During an interview on Saturday night, one of my guests said something that made me laugh. And while in the moment I found the joke humorous ... I didn’t catch everything that was said. Just to make this perfectly clear, I was laughing at the joke and not at any group of people.

Here’s a clip of Lemon’s comments:

Participants in the Saturday segment were talking about Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s angry reaction when an NPR reporter asked about his failure to defend then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch when she became the target of attacks by Rudy Giuliani , President Donald Trump ’s personal attorney.

Lemon lost it when Wilson joked that Trump “couldn’t find Ukraine on a map if you had the letter ‘U’ and a picture of an actual crane on a map.” 

As the original video shows, Lemon continued to cackle as Wilson jokingly accused Pompeo of playing to the “boomer rube” demo:

The video went viral on Monday, especially after Trump retweeted the Daily Caller’s comment on the segment, adding his own insult of Lemon .

Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. weighed in as well.