Don Lemon muses that if Donald Trump can be president, so could he

Appearing on the daytime talk show Sherri, journalist Don Lemon offered a striking answer to a question that would have seemed unlikely not long ago: Should he run for president?

“Yes. Why not? Why not? Why not? I’m not saying that I’m going to do it, but why not?” Lemon asked.

Lemon outlined his view of leadership, emphasizing humility and reliance on expertise. “You just hire great people around you, experts. You don’t think that you’re the smartest person in the room and you let the smart people advise you,” Lemon said.

The moment, prompted by host Sherri Shepherd, came as Lemon’s life and career had shifted dramatically. Once a prime-time anchor at CNN, he now operates as an independent journalist with a large digital following, even as he faces a high-profile legal case stemming from his arrest while reporting at a protest after the ICE killing of Renee Good in Minnesota earlier this year.

“It’s been tough in a lot of ways because of all the attention that I don’t as a journalist you don’t want,” Lemon said during the interview. He added that he was in Minnesota in a reporting capacity.“I went to Minneapolis to be a journalist, to do journalism, and that’s what I was doing,” he said.

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The case has drawn scrutiny from press freedom advocates and placed Lemon in the unusual position of being both observer and subject of the national political moment he once covered from behind a desk.

“I’m about, as you know, journalism about the First Amendment, I’m about the freedom of the press,” he added.

Since leaving cable news, Lemon, who is gay, has leaned into a more direct, less mediated style of reporting, building an independent platform through the Don Lemon Show weekdays at 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern, and cultivating a base of supporters he calls the “Lemon Nation.”

“One of the reasons that I became an independent journalist is because I wanted to be closer to the ground and to what was happening without the gatekeepers,” he said. He added, “I want my platform to be a platform for the voiceless.”

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The past few months have also brought intensely public personal moments, including his release from custody after he was arrested in Los Angeles in February, which drew a large media presence and viral attention. Lemon recalled the scene as surreal. “I was surprised that there was so many people out there… it was literally [like] in the movies with the press walking up to the glass and the doors at the courthouse,” he said. Reflecting on the experience, he added, “What they meant for bad, God meant for good.”

Lemon addressed the idea of a presidential run not as a declaration but as an extension of possibility. “My parents taught me growing up that I could be anything that I wanted,” he said. He then pointed to the current political landscape: “If Donald Trump could be president. Why couldn’t I be president? I might do it. Who knows?”

Watch Don Lemon on Sherri below.

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