‘I Might Get Arrested, People’

How MAGA media outlets are fueling Trump’s crackdown on the press.

On January 18, Don Lemon, a former CNN anchor who now broadcasts independently on YouTube to over a million subscribers, got wind of a protest set to take place in a Minnesota church. Activists, angry over the deployment of thousands of federal officers to the Twin Cities and the shooting of Renee Good less than two weeks before, had heard that a pastor at the Cities Church in St. Paul led the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office. They planned to disrupt a Sunday service and make their discontent plain; Lemon prepared to cover the event live.

Lemon livestreams many of his videos, which means there’s a lot of ambient material—his feet crunching the snowy Minnesota sidewalk as he approaches the church, inside jokes with his producer—as well as a chance to overhear behind-the-reporting exchanges. “So I’m going to go inside, guys,” Lemon says as he mics up in a car, “and I’m gonna give the rundown of what’s going on.”