CNN's Don Lemon holds up sign showing N-word on air, asks, 'Does this offend you?'

CNN's Don Lemon sparked controversy on Monday, holding up a sign with the N-word printed in bold, capital letters at the top of his primetime show after President Barack Obama used the racial epithet in a discussion about race with podcast host Marc Maron.

"Does this offend you?" Lemon asked viewers as he held up the sign. "President Obama said it out loud in an interview. And a lot of people are shocked."

The stunt was widely mocked on Twitter, where Lemon quickly became a meme.

"Racism, we are not cured of it," Obama said in the podcast interview, which was recorded Friday and posted online Monday. "And it's not just a matter of it not being polite to say n----- in public. That's not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It's not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don't, overnight, completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior."

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the president has no regrets about using the controversial term.

"He does not," Earnest told reporters. "The president's use of the word and the reason he used the word could not be more apparent."

Later in the CNN broadcast, Lemon led a discussion on President Obama's use of the word — and defended his own.

"I'm a journalist and I need to say what the president said. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, I'm not going to censor it," Lemon explained. "I've been at CNN for almost nine years. I've said that word for nine years on CNN."

He added: "I think that journalists should not be censored. I think we are the record and the record shows what the president says. So, if the president can utter that word, we should be able to utter it, too."

Related video: