Don Lemon’s meteoric fall from “trusted” cable pundit to participant in a political mob isn’t an accident — it’s the logical result of a left-wing media culture that rewards spectacle over responsibility. Last weekend’s disruption at Cities Church in the Twin Cities, where anti-ICE activists burst into a Sunday service and scared families and children, has rightly prompted the Department of Justice to take notice and promise action. The Justice Department’s civil-rights leadership has signaled that participating in or facilitating the harassment of worshippers is not going to be tolerated.
Video and livestreams of the incident show protesters charging into a church service chanting and overwhelming congregants while Lemon captured the chaos on his feed, framing it as a righteous protest rather than an invasion of sacred space. Accounts from people on the ground describe frightened children and parents forced out into freezing temperatures while the mob made its point. Americans who still believe in the sanctity of worship would be right to be outraged that a public figure thought normalizing this behavior was acceptable.
What makes this more damning is that Lemon appears to have been more than just an opportunistic camera operator; footage shows him embedded with organizers, referencing the activists’ planned “Operation Pull-Up” before the church was entered. That looks a lot less like impartial reporting and a lot more like active coordination with a group intent on confrontation. Journalists used to have scruples about maintaining distance from the subjects they cover; apparently those boundaries have eroded among elite media figures.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, led publicly by Harmeet Dhillon on this matter, has explicitly warned that “journalism” is not a shield if one is an active participant in a conspiracy to interfere with religious worship. Federal statutes that protect places of worship exist for a reason: they reflect the common-sense American belief that worship services are not supposed to be turned into political battlegrounds. If the law means anything, it must apply equally to celebrities and anchors as it does to ordinary citizens.
Don Lemon predictably dug in, insisting he was “chroncling protests” and invoking the First Amendment as though that absolves anyone of responsibility for disrupting a house of worship. That dodge won’t pass muster with voters who see a clear double standard: when conservative voices protest, the left screams about law and order, but when the media’s own join the chaos, suddenly it’s an act of civic virtue. Lemon’s defensive posture underscores the broader problem — a media class that believes its moral authority excuses its worst instincts.
Voices on the right, including commentators and outlets that pushed the footage into wider view, have rightly demanded accountability, not performative outrage. Conservative journalists and commentators are doing the public service of showing exactly how media elites can normalize political violence while pretending to be neutral observers. This isn’t about silencing dissent; it’s about insisting that protest not become a license for intimidation and that the same laws apply to the powerful as to everyone else.
If Dave Rubin’s Direct Message segment pulled back the curtain on how out-of-touch establishment media figures like Lemon have become, good. Americans deserve transparency and consequences, not excuses and gaslighting. The DOJ should follow the evidence and let the chips fall where they may, because protecting places of worship and enforcing the rule of law must take priority over protecting a narrative that lets celebrities play by different rules.
Hardworking Americans watching this spectacle are left with a clear takeaway: the elites who lecture the rest of us about civility and democracy are often the first to abandon both when it suits their tribe. It’s time for conservatives to keep pressing for equal application of the law, to defend sacred institutions from political mobs, and to make sure media actors answer for behavior that crosses the line from reporting into instigation.
