Actor Chris Evans urged Don Lemon to challenge Donald Trump for the presidency in 2020, after the CNN host went on a rant about the president’s remarks at Tuesday’s rally in Phoenix, Arizona.
“Can @donlemon please run for president in 2020?” the Captain America star tweeted Wednesday morning. “Thank you for speaking truth in the face of so much ignorance and inevitable retaliation.”
Evans’s plea for Lemon to run for president was inspired by the CNN anchor’s longwinded rebuttal of President Trump’s speech to a packed crowd of supporters at the Phoenix Convention Center.
“What we witnessed is a total eclipse of the facts. Someone who came out on stage and lied directly to the American people and left things out that he said in an attempt to rewrite history, especially when it comes to Charlottesville,” Lemon said of Trump’s remarks late Tuesday night. “He’s unhinged, it’s embarrassing, and I don’t mean for us, the media because he went after us, but for the country. This is who we elected president of the United States. A man who is so petty that he has to go after people he deems to be his enemy, like an imaginary friend of a six-year-old.”
Trump had spent a portion of his hour-and-a-half-long speech hammering the media for misinterpreting remarks he made, in which he condemned the neo-Nazis and white nationalist protesters that caused violence in Charlottesville, Virginia earlier this month.
Later in his CNN broadcast Tuesday, Lemon, without offering evidence, said Trump “is clearly trying to ignite a civil war in this country.”
“He hasn’t really said anything that denounced the alt-right. He talked about the KKK and whatever. He hasn’t really done that. He is clearly trying to ignite a civil war in this country,” Lemon said. “He has not tamped down race. And I’m just going to say, if he was on my team, in this newsroom, and said those things, he would be escorted out of the building by security.”
However, Evans wasn’t the only Hollywood star to slam Trump’s speech.
Rosie O’Donnell, Trump’s longtime nemesis, said “trump u pathetic piece of human waste – god will never forgive u – neither will AMERICA – u lying sack of sh*t – fu*k u and ur paid crowd.”
Other stars called President Trump “sick” and a “racist.
“clearly mentally ill & unfit- removed in a straight jacket or cuffs – he’ll defecate on stage at a rally next – who would be surprised?” wrote actor John Cusack.
Other stars slammed the president’s supporters.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson