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Don Lemon’s Record Finally Catches Up with Him

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Don Lemon arrives to the global premiere for Apple’s The Morning Show at the Lincoln Center in New York City, October 28, 2019. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

The ouster comes after Variety published an exposé detailing a mountain of workplace harassment allegations against Lemon.

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Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we recap Don Lemon’s biggest controversies, question the Associated Press’s news judgment, and cover more media misses.

One Controversy Too Many for Don Lemon

Don Lemon is out at CNN.

The ouster comes several weeks after Variety published an exposé detailing a mountain of allegations against Lemon, who reportedly had a history of threatening his female colleagues and making provocative and erratic comments.

Nonetheless, Lemon said he was “stunned” to learn he had been fired.

“I was informed this morning by my agent that I have been terminated by CNN,” Lemon said in a statement posted to Twitter. “I am stunned. After 17 years at CNN I would have thought that someone in management would have had the decency to tell me directly. At no time was I ever given any indication that I would not be able to continue to do the work I have loved at the network.”

Though if CNN is to be believed, Lemon chose to depart on one final lie; the network says his account of events is misleading. “Don Lemon’s statement about this morning’s events is inaccurate. He was offered an opportunity to meet with management but instead released a statement on Twitter.”

CNN CEO Chris Licht confirmed Lemon’s exit in a statement: “Don will forever be a part of the CNN family, and we thank him for his contributions over the past 17 years. We wish him well and will be cheering him on in his future endeavors.”

Licht added that CNN is “committed” to the “success” of CNN This Morning, which Lemon had co-anchored with Kaitlan Collins and Poppy Harlow for the past six months after he lost his coveted primetime spot. There had reportedly been tension between Lemon and his two female coworkers on the show for months. The New York Post reported in December that Lemon previously loudly confronted Collins in front of other staff, telling her she was interrupting him too often on-air.

He was forced to undergo “formal training” in recent weeks after an on-air comment about 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley. When Haley announced her presidential bid, she suggested politicians over 75 years old should be required to pass mental-competency tests.

Amid a discussion of Haley’s proposal, Lemon suggested Haley herself isn’t in her prime: “A woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s.”

Harlow immediately pushed back on the comments saying, “What are you talking . . . wait . . . are you talking about ‘prime’ for child-bearing? Or are you talking about ‘prime’ for being president?”

Lemon spoke over Harlow to say, “Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just saying what the facts are. Google it.”

Lemon previously angered his co-hosts in December when he suggested men’s soccer is “more interesting to watch” than women’s soccer. “The men’s team makes more money. If they make more money, then they should get more money,” Lemon said. “The men’s team makes more money because people are more interested in the men.”

But according to Variety, Lemon’s recent controversies on CNN This Morning were just the tip of the iceberg.

Lemon reportedly terrorized his then-colleague Kyra Phillips when she was given a high-profile reporting gig in Iraq that he wanted from himself. While Phillips was reporting in Iraq, Lemon tore up pictures and notes on top of and inside Phillips’ desk in the news pod they shared, according to the Variety report

Phillips reportedly received threatening texts from an unknown source after she returned from Iraq. “Now you’ve crossed the line, and you’re going to pay for it,” the text read, according to the report.

A human-resources investigation ultimately traced two threatening messages back to Lemon. He was then demoted from his position co-anchoring a weekday show with Phillips to a weekend show.

When the Variety report was published earlier this month, CNN initially defended Lemon. The network told National Review in a statement at the time that Variety “provides no actual proof, and instead relies on anonymous sources and unsubstantiated claims from 10 to 15 years ago. CNN is unable to corroborate the alleged accounts.”

Other allegations in the report include that Lemon called one of his female producers fat to her face and that he mocked Nancy Grace on air by mimicking her. Lemon also allegedly dated a 22-year-old male staffer, while Lemon was 41 at the time.

In another alleged act of professional jealousy, Lemon claimed on an editorial call of roughly 30 staffers that colleague Soledad O’Brien wasn’t black after she was named the host of CNN’s Black in America docuseries. And despite Lemon being assigned the coveted job of covering Michael Jackson’s funeral from within the Staples Center, he allegedly complained that Anderson Cooper was receiving more airtime.

He also had a reputation of being a less-than-stellar worker, according to the report, which claims he regularly skipped editorial calls and came late to the newsroom.

Lemon joined the network in 2006 but saw his star power rise during the Trump administration.

In August 2016, Trump called Lemon a “lightweight” who is “dumb as a rock,” after the CNN anchor sparred with Dan Bongino over comments Trump made about Hillary Clinton. “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is. I don’t know,” Trump said at the time. His campaign later claimed the comment was meant to refer to political action, not violence.

Lemon once lectured a Jewish Trump official about antisemitism, but claimed last week that 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy could not disagree with him during an argument about black history and Second Amendment rights because Ramaswamy is not black. The combative interview, which made headlines, left several CNN leaders “exasperated,” according to the New York Times.

Lemon has come under fire for perpetuating stereotypes about his own community: While covering the riots in Ferguson, Mo., after the death of Michael Brown, he reported “obviously there’s a smell of marijuana in the air as well.”

He also came under fire for suggesting that Joan Tarshis, who accused Bill Cosby of raping her, should have bitten his penis to stop the attack.

Among Lemon’s greatest flops:

Lemon, in October 2018, infamously claimed that the “biggest terror threat in this country is white men.” At the time, he also said only “right-wingers” commit murders over their political beliefs. “I don’t see Democrats killing people” because of political views, he said.

He also has a storied history of belittling entire groups of people.

In July 2021, he blasted those who had failed to get vaccinated against Covid-19: “If behavior is idiotic and nonsensical, I think that you need to tell people that their behavior is idiotic and nonsensical.”

In November 2020, he likened Trump supporters to drug addicts who have to “hit rock bottom” to seek help. He said he had to “get rid of” friends who supported Trump.

Earlier that year, Lemon cried tears of laughter and slammed his head on his desk when ex-GOP strategist Rick Wilson joked that Trump would be too stupid to find Ukraine on a map. Wilson also called Trump’s supporters the “credulous boomer rube demo.”

“‘Donald Trump’s the smart one — and y’all elitists are dumb!’” Wilson said in a dramatized southern accent. CNN contributor Wajahat Ali jumped in to add: “‘You elitists with your geography and your maps — and your spelling!’”

“‘Your math and your reading!’” Wilson added. “‘All those lines on the map!’”

Lemon later claimed he had not heard every comment that was made and was laughing at a joke “not at any group of people.”

At times, the host could be heard straight-up lying. He blasted Republican representative Glenn Grothman for saying Black Lives Matter “doesn’t like the old fashioned family” in March 2021.

“What he says isn’t even coded racism. That’s right out — saying it right out loud. Saying it right out loud. When people show you who they are, huh?” Lemon said of Grothman, though the BLM website itself previously said, “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.”

Lemon’s own colleagues questioned his journalist ethics when he refused to surrender his phone to law enforcement after he communicated with Jussie Smollett about his hate-crime hoax, telling Smollett the police doubted his story. National Review was told by CNN that the “interaction was an act of journalism as Don was attempting to prompt a response from Mr. Smollett and book him for his show.”

Lemon was widely panned in November 2020 for whining about how difficult the four years of the Trump administration had been for him.

“I don’t dare speak [for] my colleagues, but I can’t tell you how difficult it’s been as a journalist to cover this dark part of our history,” Lemon tweeted. “Let’s hope the attacks on journalists, journalism and EVERYONE end. Time to move into the light. #america”

And yet Lemon boldly claimed in November during an interview with Stephen Colbert that, “I don’t think we ever were liberal” at CNN when asked about reports that Licht wanted to bring the network back to the middle.

Headline Fail of the Week

This week’s dishonor goes to the Associated Press, for keeping Americans apprised of this nationally important breaking news: “Montana lawmakers deliberately misgender a transgender colleague.”

“A group of conservative Republican lawmakers in Montana deliberately misgendered a transgender colleague in demanding that she be censured for language she used on the floor while speaking against a bill that would ban gender-affirming medical care for children,” the story explains.

It adds: “The Montana Freedom Caucus posted its demand on Twitter Tuesday evening — on letterhead bearing the names of 21 lawmakers — arguing that Democratic Rep. Zooey Zephyr should be punished ‘for trying to shame the Montana legislative body and by using inappropriate and uncalled-for language during a floor debate.’”

The AP notes that the caucus “called for a ‘commitment to civil discourse,’ while misgendering Zephyr in the same sentence.” The caucus also committed the sin of misgendering Zephyr in a tweet.

“It is disheartening that the Montana Freedom Caucus would stoop so low as to misgender me in their letter, further demonstrating their disregard for the dignity and humanity of transgender individuals,” Zephyr said in a statement to the AP. “Their call for ‘civility and respect’ is hypocritical given their actions.”

Media Misses

  • A new cause of gun violence just dropped: the Bud Light boycott, according to former Republican strategist Stuart Stevens. Stevens, a senior adviser for the Lincoln Project, appeared on MSNBC and blamed a “culture of fearfulness” perpetuated by the GOP for rising gun violence.”Look I think there’s a direct line between a culture of fearfulness where people who live in a world in which they feel threatened by Instagram posts or a beer label,” he said. “There’s a deep sickness here that goes beyond just guns. It goes to this culture of fear and really, I mean I hate to say this because I worked for the Republican Party a lot of years.” He went on to claim that Republicans have latched on to a culture of fear in an effort to “maximize their predominantly white vote.”
  • MSNBC host Jen Psaki has earned a spot in the Media Misses for a third consecutive week. Last week, she invited U.S. climate czar John Kerry on her show for a fluffy conversation about Forrest Gump over ice cream. When Kerry suggested the “planet is at risk,” Psaki, who worked as Kerry’s spokesperson at the State Department during the Obama administration, quickly changed the subject to ice cream.

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