Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon Invoke Lord Voldemort, Holocaust Poem to Warn of ‘Emboldened’ Trump’s Loyalty Campaign

During the handoff between their shows on Friday night, CNN hosts Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon soberly invoked the Harry Potter villain Lord Voldemort and a famous Nazi resistance poem, respectively, to warn about an “emboldened” President Donald Trump’s loyalty campaign.

The pair’s ominous reference riffed off of Cuomo’s “Be On the Lookout (BOLO)” final segment, where he told viewers to watch for fewer government officials daring to speak out for fear of retribution by the Trump White House.

“Be on the lookout. You ain’t seen nothing yet. It’s only going to get worse. It’s only going to get worse,” Lemon said. “He’s emboldened. He’s emboldened, brother.”

“Oh, he is emboldened,” Cuomo agreed. “He’s been set free. When you know that your party won’t do anything to check you. He doesn’t even have to think twice. Look what he did with the intelligence briefing to Congress.”

“But I mean, these loyalty tests, this is like straight out of Voldemort’s book,” Cuomo said, alluding to Trump’s retribution against and reported campaign to replace government official who have called out of favor with him. “You know, they’re going around: ‘Are you with us or not.’ You know, it’s not supposed to be about that.”

“What is the thing?” Lemon asked, before paraphrasing a famous poem by Martin Niemöller that serves as a cautionary tale about how the Nazis rose to power in Germany and is part of an exhibition at the US Holocaust Museum. “When they came after this person I didn’t say anything, and then they came after that person. and the came for that person. Finally, there was nobody left.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.