Friday at Variety’s Entertainment & Technology NYC Summit, CNN’s Don Lemon said it was his “obligation as a journalist” to call President Donald Trump “racist.”

When asked about calling Trump a racist on air, Lemon said, “If he is not racist he’s certainly is racist-adjacent.”

He continued, “If you have the evidence that shows you, that indicates, that leads you to nothing else but this president being racist, then I feel it’s my obligation as a journalist to say it. On that night I said it, and I don’t regret saying it. I believe that to be true.”

He added, “Show me some evidence otherwise, besides I have black friends, I don’t really have any evidence of that either. I don’t. I mean when you say you have black friends, let’s just be honest here, when you say you have black friends, that doesn’t mean it’s people who come over to your office because they want something. It doesn’t mean it’s the people you work with because you have to be around them. If you have black friends it means these people have been in your life forever. You’ve been to their weddings. You, you know, hang out with them. You go for a run with them. You go to lunch with them. You vacation with them. You do things with them. You have dinner with them, you have lunch with them, you have breakfast with them. You hang out, you know their families. You spend Christmas, you spend holidays. That is what having a black friend means. I see no evidence of that either.

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