Democrats keep bragging about their deep bench for 2028.
So far it looks more like a folding chair. And somebody finally said so on air.
But Megyn Kelly just told her audience one man should run, and the reason should embarrass every Democrat in Washington, DC.
Megyn Kelly Throws Her Viewers a Curveball
Kelly played a clip on The Megyn Kelly Show of Don Lemon chewing over a run for public office.
In the clip, Lemon said fans keep asking whether he’d jump into politics. He admitted he has “thought about it.” He claimed he’d do the job better than President Trump. And he put the odds of running at some point in his life at 65 to 70 percent.
Most conservative hosts would have laughed and moved on. Kelly went the other direction.
“OK, I’m going to shock you,” Kelly said. “I think he should do it! I actually think he should do it. First of all, it’s not a dealbreaker that he has spent his life as a journalist. I mean, you could absolutely parlay that into a career in public service.”
Then she delivered the line that turned a compliment into a gut punch for the entire Democrat Party.
“Second of all, do you really think Kamala Harris is a lot smarter than Don Lemon?” Kelly continued. “Do you? I know she was at least a lawyer. She was an attorney general for the state of California. No, I don’t believe so. You think Joe Biden was? I don’t.”
Kelly kept going. She asked whether Americans have grown “so enamored with our public officials” that they can’t picture somebody like Lemon doing the job. And she said Lemon could hold his own against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, insisting he “could match wits against” the New York socialist “just fine.”
Read that one more time. Kelly set the bar at Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, and a fired cable anchor stepped right over it.
Don Lemon Keeps Auditioning for a Job Nobody Offered
Lemon made the comments Kelly aired during an interview on the Uncloseted podcast with host Spencer Macnaughton.
“I think I could be a better president than Donald Trump,” Lemon said.
But this was hardly the first time Lemon tried on the Oval Office for size. He has floated the idea over and over throughout 2026, almost like a man waiting for somebody to talk him out of it.
On Pod Save America in the spring, Lemon told guest host Alex Wagner he could “run this country a lot better than Donald Trump.” In the same breath, he handed himself a ready-made excuse for a future loss.
“I’m not a white man and the rules are different for me,” Lemon said.
Democrats reach for that line every time voters turn them down. Kamala Harris didn’t lose in 2024 because America is a racist or sexist country. She lost because voters looked at the open border, the grocery bills, and the woke lectures, and they wanted no part of it. Lemon apparently wrote his concession speech before he wrote a platform.
And then came the summer. On the Can’t Be Censored podcast in July, Lemon declared, “I actually think I would be a really good president of the United States.”
In that same interview, he said “MAGA is the closest thing to the modern version of the Nazi Party.” Comparing tens of millions of American voters to Nazis is an unusual way to open a campaign for their support. Maybe it plays well with the podcast crowd. It won’t play in Ohio.
The White House didn’t bother with a long rebuttal. Spokesman Davis Ingle answered: “Don Lemon is a low ratings loser that no one takes seriously.”
Lemon also took a swipe at President Trump’s resume, saying “you don’t have to have a ton of political experience” to win the job these days. That’s rich coming from a man whose most recent full-time employer showed him the door. Trump built a business empire and won the Presidency twice. CNN fired Lemon in 2023 after a string of controversies, including his on-air comment that Nikki Haley was “past her prime.”
There’s legal baggage, too. Lemon pleaded not guilty in February to charges tied to his arrest in connection with a church takeover, and his lawyers filed motions to dismiss in August. The case remains unresolved, and Lemon is presumed innocent. But any campaign manager would wince at that opening chapter.
The Real Punchline Is the Democrat Bench
So why would Megyn Kelly, of all people, cheer this on?
Because the joke isn’t really about Don Lemon. It’s about the people Kelly measured him against.
Kamala Harris climbed to the top of the ticket without winning a single primary vote. Democrats installed her after spending years insisting Joe Biden was sharp as a tack behind closed doors. That story fell apart on a debate stage in front of the entire country, and nobody in the party ever owned up to hiding it.
And then there’s Ocasio-Cortez, the darling of the socialist wing, whose big ideas boil down to more government control over the economy and more taxpayer money for programs that never seem to work. That’s the brain trust Kelly put Lemon up against. She didn’t have to stretch.
When a podcaster with no political experience, a pending court case, and a habit of calling his opponents Nazis can look at the field and give himself 65 to 70 percent odds of running, that says something. Not about Lemon. About the field.
Maybe that’s a little unfair. Lemon himself admitted that a presidential run would swallow a person whole and require full-time devotion. He may never file the paperwork. Plenty of television personalities talk big on podcasts and then go right back to talking big on podcasts.
But Democrat primary voters have rewarded performance over substance before. Lemon says he’d like to run a campaign without begging donors for money, powered by fans who already watch his show. In a crowded primary where the loudest voice on social media can grab the early headlines, stranger things have happened.
The party that once lectured Republicans about electing a celebrity may wind up with a celebrity of its own. And it won’t be a businessman who created jobs. It’ll be a cable news castoff who thinks half the country belongs in a history book about fascism.
Kelly called her own take a shocker. The bigger shock is that she might be right about the Democrats.
Sources: Mediaite, “‘I’m Going to Shock You’: Megyn Kelly Thinks Don Lemon Should Run for President”; Just the News, “Former CNN host Don Lemon considering presidential bid”; The Blaze, “Don Lemon makes wild comments about possible presidential run”; Variety, “Don Lemon Considers Running for President”; Fox News, “Don Lemon compares MAGA to ‘modern version of Nazi Party,’ floats 2028 White House bid”; Washington Examiner, “Don Lemon says he’s ‘totally serious’ that he would be ‘a really good president’”