Latest insult for Don Lemon after viral video showed him being schooled by strangers about Trump

A TikToker who had a heated confrontation with former CNN host Don Lemon admitted he didn’t recognize the longtime liberal star at first.

Last month, former professional football player Will John clashed with Lemon in New York City over questions raised by the mainstream media about the level of influence Elon Musk had over newly elected President Donald Trump.

“I didn’t know who he was originally. That’s the funny thing,” John said Fox News.

“He’s one of those guys who’s just been on the news, you know, for, I don’t know how long, almost fifteen years or something. And so, my videographer said, there’s that guy. And I looked, and I recognized the face, but I don’t know the name.’

Lemon asked John to comment on claims that Trump is effectively second in command, while Musk is effectively serving as shadow president.

“Who do you think is the real president-elect?” Lemon asked.

“Well, Donald Trump won, I think,” John replied.

The discussion became tense when Lemon said that “Democratic lawmakers in Washington are now calling Elon Musk ‘President Musk,’ and they say Donald Trump is President Musk’s vice president or communications chief.”

“What, what, what, what – wait a minute, no. No one said that,” John shot back.

Will John said he initially didn’t recognize former CNN anchor Don Lemon when they collided in New York City’s Washington Square Park

During their heated exchange, Lemon pressed TikToker and former professional football player about Democrats’ claims that Elon Musk was acting as a shadow president.

‘Real? Didn’t you see the news and pay attention?’ the former CNN anchor responded incredulously.

“Absolutely not,” John interjected. “I pay attention to what I do during the day so I can try to have a better life and get ahead.”

Lemon then insisted that John google “President Musk” on his phone and read the names of the publications that addressed the issue.

John said the search results included stories from Axios, Business Insider, ABC News, the New York Times and the Atlantic, causing Lemon to respond as if he had properly understood the subject of the interview.

“I don’t trust any of these. I don’t trust any of them,” John replied.

‘We are the common man. We don’t trust any of these. Nobody trusts the government. No one trusts the regular news. We don’t trust it anymore. Independent news, we are the ones who own the news now. People trust me. They don’t trust MSNBC because I care, and I’m actually one of them.”

“I can’t disagree with you,” Lemon replied.

In his interview with Fox, John said Lemon relied on “talking points” by quoting mainstream media, something he called “absurd.”

“I think part of the problem is that when he lists this… Axios, Business Insider, ABC News and all this stuff, it doesn’t carry the weight that it did in the ’80s or ’60s,” John said.

Still, John acknowledged that he shares Lemon’s concerns about the extent to which Musk could gain power in the new White House.

The CEO of Tesla and owner of social media platform X donated $277 million to the Trump campaign and other Republican candidates ahead of the election

‘I think it’s virtually impossible to say that the richest man in the world has no influence on things. We’d all be pretty naive to believe that,” John said. ‘It is very difficult for us to know from the outside where and how much that influence is. And I think that’s clearly the troubling thing.”

The CEO of Tesla and owner of social media platform X donated $277 million to the Trump campaign and other Republican candidates ahead of the election.

This was done largely through his Super PAC, America PAC. Through that entity, he also gave $1 million rewards to registered voters in battleground states ahead of the November election

Post-election, Musk has become a near-constant presence in the newly elected president’s inner circle, so much so that Trump has joked that he “can’t get rid of Musk.”

In addition to his role as co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk appears to be aware of certain foreign policy issues.

Shortly after Trump was elected, Musk joined him on a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Musk even met with a top Iranian official to defuse tensions, something Trump said he knew nothing about when interviewed by Time magazine in December.

In the weeks since Trump’s defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris, Musk’s fortune nearly doubled from $264 billion to $437 billion, thanks to extraordinary gains in Tesla stock.