Don Lemon couldn't help but take a swipe at President Donald Trump while giving his fellow CNN host Chris Cuomo a tour of his new studio.
Lemon joked that he "actually lives here" when showing Cuomo the new studio for his CNN Tonight show, quipping that his "apartment is actually up here" while walking along a flight of stairs.
"I live over here, there's a bathroom and a kitchen back there…I'm telling you I live here."
Eventually Lemon admits that "I don't actually live here, you know I'm kidding, but isn't it beautiful?"
Cuomo then asks how much an apartment of that size would actually cost in the city of New York, where the show is filmed, to which Lemon replies: "Who could afford it?
"The only person who could afford an apartment like this maybe, well wouldn't be Trump it would be someone who's actually a real billionaire."
Cuomo described how he is impressed with the size of the new studio compared the one he uses for his Prime Time show. "We're sitting around with like a six-pack of Coke and a couple of lamps," he said.
Lemon appeared to be making reference to recent revelations in the New York Times which claimed that Trump's businesses lost more than $1 billion in the between 1985 and 1994. The report states that Trump lost so much money during this time that he was able to avoid paying income tax for eight of the 10 years.
HBO host Bill Mayer also mocked Trump's claim to be a billionaire in the wake of the report from The Times.
"He sold himself to this country as a business genius," he said during his opening monologue for Real Time with Bill Maher. "Turns out, he's a reverse billionaire—his economic value was minus $1.17 billion. And today, Melania was like 'Tell me again why I'm f*****g this guy.'"
Presidential candidate Michael Bennet also described that Trump's substantial loses and dodging of taxes as the "best example lately of socialism in this system."
"That's an amazing thing," Bennet told a group of supporters. "There are rich people all over America, and none of them lost more money than Donald Trump.
"Donald Trump says, 'no, no, I didn't lose that money. Because, he said, 'I'm the greatest businessman in the world. I just was able to write that stuff out of my taxes.' What could be more socialist than that?"
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy ... Read more
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