CNN’s Don Lemon would not have extended a hand to President Trump as the Obamas did had he been seated next to the president at former President George H.W. Bush’s funeral.
“I’m going to say that I don’t think I would shake hands with him. I would just — nope, couldn’t do it. I’m not that big a person,” Lemon told his CNN colleague Chris Cuomo Wednesday at the top of his show. “I would hope that I would be, but I don’t — I can’t fake the funk as they say.”
“They showed the ultimate respect for the office,” Lemon said of the Obamas. “They do not have to show respect for someone who does not respect them.”
Former President Barack Obama and wife Michelle Obama greeted President Trump and first lady Melania Trump as they sat down beside them and other ex-Oval Office occupants Wednesday at Washington National Cathedral for the funeral service celebrating the life of the 41st president.
President Trump has frequently lobbed political attacks at his predecessor, including encouraging the so-called “birther” movement, which called into question his legitimacy as president by questioning his birthplace. The pair more recently clashed on the campaign trail ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
Lemon, who himself as been a target of Trump’s, on Wednesday evening then demonstrated how he would have ignored the current president’s outstretched hand using a member of his crew.
“I’m not petty and small. That’s real, brother. That’s real,” he said in response to Cuomo telling him he was being rude. “This is not about ideology. This is about the way someone conducts themselves. If you constantly called me names, and you were rude to me, and you — why should I have to show you respect at all?”
Lemon went on to say he would not have attended the funeral had he been in Trump’s position.
“An office is not a human being. I don’t think it’s respect for the human being if you talk smack about them, if you say the nastiest things about them, if you treat them as subhuman, and then you want to show up at their funeral. Really? Hell to the no,” he said.
During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Trump also lambasted former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in an attempt to tie him to the unpopular aspects of the administrations run by his brother, former President George W. Bush, and their father, the 41st president.
George H.W. Bush died Nov. 30 at the age of 94. He will be buried Thursday at his namesake presidential library in College Station, Texas.
