"CNN Tonight" anchor Don Lemon said he "didn't mean to compare" President Donald Trump with Adolf Hitler.
Lemon made the controversial comments during a late night debate on June 18 with fellow CNN host Chris Cuomo, arguing that such "bad people" shouldn't be given a platform.
However, Lemon tried to retract his statement on June 20. During a debate surrounding 2020 presidential hopeful Joe Biden's controversial comments regarding segregation, Lemon said:
"I didn't mean to compare Hitler to the president, but it was in-artful," he continued.
He added, "I was trying to—trying to speak about people who give misinformation and propaganda."
He brought that Cuomo mentioned his comparison was "an extreme that was in-artful."
"I didn't mean it in that way and I think we have to ... sometimes people say things in a conversation and you get what I'm trying to say, but people turn it into something else. And I think I get what Joe Biden was trying to say in the same vein," Lemon added.
Biden's comments received immediate backlash.
As for Lemon's original comment, even Cuomo called the comparison "extreme."
Cuomo started the debate by describing 2020 as the most "definitional" election in his lifetime. Lemon followed with an attempt to shame Trump supporters, referencing a rally in Florida earlier that evening.
Lemon urged Cuomo to "think about the most despicable people in history" and warned him that he was going to use an "extreme example."
"Think about Hitler. Think about any of those people... if you could look back in history, would you say, 'Well, I'm so glad that person was allowed a platform so that they could spread their hate and propaganda and lies,' or would you say, 'That probably wasn't the right thing to do to spread that' because you knew in that moment that was a bad person and they were doing bad things. And not only were they hurting people, they were killing people," Lemon said on Tuesday.
"I think that the example matters … that's a very extreme example," Cuomo responded.
"Listen, for people like me, how this the president feels about the Central Park Five, that could be a life or death issue for people like me," Lemon said. "He took a big part of their life away ... and demonizing immigrants and talking about [expletive] countries' and saying that 'there were very fine people on both sides.' For people of color in this country, it is a life or death issue ... so I'm just saying we just need to be careful about having 'these are standard rules.' This is not standard. This is not normal."
"Comparing anything to an extreme like a Hitler—it weakens the argument," Cuomo replied, "because you are now taking a guy who says things you don't like and comparing him to a genocidal maniac."
"I'm not comparing him to that," Lemon attempted to clarify. "I'm comparing the way you would cover someone who is a bad person who does bad things."