Don Lemon on Thursday took a jab at 2024 hopeful Nikki Haley for wanting “grace” from the public after the Republican presidential candidate sidestepped mentioning slavery as a cause of the U.S. civil war, pointing out that Haley “didn’t offer me that same grace” after his own controversial remarks about her earlier this year.
In February, Lemon, then an anchor at CNN, was assailed by critics for commenting on-air that Haley, 51, was “past her prime.”
“Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime,” he said. “Sorry... A woman is considered to be in her prime in her twenties and thirties and maybe forties.”
ADVERTISEMENT
“What are you talking—Wait. Prime for what?” a shocked Poppy Harlow responded.
“Don’t shoot the messenger, I’m just saying what the facts are,” Lemon said. “Google it.”
Hours later, Lemon apologized, calling his words “inartful and irrelevant.” But the controversy threatened to bury him and, two months later, was one of the reasons he was abrupt fired from the network.
Haley delighted in his ouster, asking at a New Hampshire campaign stop if they thought Lemon had been fired “because he was beyond his prime” and calling his departure “a gift to every woman in America.”
“All I’ll say is, ‘Who’s in their prime now?’” Haley gloated.
On Thursday, Lemon reminded his X followers that Haley had “immediately and very publicly” taken him to task, “and fundraised off of it.”
He noted that he was glad that Haley had since clarified her remarks. In a Thursday morning interview on local radio show The Pulse of NH, Haley told host Jack Heath, “I mean, of course the Civil War was about slavery.”
“I want to nip it in the bud,” she added, according to The Washington Post. “Yes, we know the Civil War was about slavery. But more than that, what’s the lesson in all this? That freedom matters. And individual rights and liberties matter for all people. That’s the blessing of America.”
Haley’s fumble had come a day prior at the hands of a voter at a town hall in Berlin, New Hampshire. The man asked her outright what the cause of the Civil War had been, to which Haley quipped, “Well, don’t come with an easy question.”
Her answer seemed to allude to the issue of states’ rights, touching on “the role of government and what the rights of the people are.” When the man expressed that he was “astonished” she hadn’t mentioned slavery, Haley responded, “What do you want me to say about slavery?”
At a town hall in North Conway after the radio interview, Haley backtracked further.
“America had the decision and the moral question of whether slavery was a good thing. And whether government economically, culturally, any other reasons, had a role to play in that,” she said, the Post reported. “By the grace of God, we did the right thing and slavery is no more.”
In his Thursday tweet, Lemon concluded, “And, In the spirit of the season, let’s see if her actions match her corrected words moving forward.”
