Reporting on the “festival of flattery on the White House lawn,” Lemon, 51, could barely muster his words through laughter as he introduced two presidential historians to analyze the pomp and ceremony. “I mean, listen...” he began before descending into giggles.

“What is going on here?” Lemon laughed, before sarcastically complimenting the historians, Timothy Naftali and Douglas Brinkley, in the same tone as Ryan and company. “By the way, you gentlemen look so handsome. You are such fantastic historians, I’m just honored to be on television with you,” the CNN anchor joked to Naftali and Brinkley.

Commentating over footage of the GOP applauding Trump, Lemon said, “Oh my gosh, look at them.”

Brinkley said “the exaggeration of having to kiss the ring of Donald Trump, it almost seems like a scene out of The Godfather, not what you’d expect from the president of a democracy.”

Naftali added that he hasn’t seen “this kind of sycophancy” since listening to the Nixon tapes in which former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told President Richard Nixon “what a remarkable human being he is.”