Don Lemon feels “vindicated” that Chris Licht, the man who fired him from CNN, is now gone from the network as well.
Making his first major media appearance since he was ousted from the cable-news pioneer in April, Lemon co-hosted the popular podcast Pivot this week alongside Kara Swisher and opened up about what he’s been up to since leaving CNN.
“I’ve been going around traveling a lot, actually,” he said. “I’ve been doing a lot of traveling. Spending time with my family, my fiancé, and my dogs. I’ve been to Baton Rouge where my family lives. I’ve gone to New Orleans. I’ve gone to Park City and I’ve gone to Italy. I’ve spent some time in Europe, and I’ve been talking to a lot of people.”
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Lemon, who spent 17 years at CNN before his unceremonious departure this spring, added that he’s come to the realization that “we all live in bubbles” since leaving cable news. “You think every single person is paying attention, and they’re as up to date as we are about the news and about the issues, and they're following every single development and micro development with Donald Trump in politics,” he declared. “They’re not.”
Saying that the people he talks to now mostly discuss issues that impact them personally, Lemon asserted that he’s also been told that they want him back on the air.
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“They’re worried about walking down the street in certain parts of the country, in certain cities. They want to be able to afford their families. How high rents are, how mortgage rates,” the ex-CNN star proclaimed. “That’s what they talk to me about, and they say they miss me on CNN.”
Eventually, the conversation steered to Licht and the former CNN chief’s exit from the network after a tumultuous 13-month reign, which was marked by low employee morale, massive layoffs, declining ratings, and a poorly received town hall with former President Donald Trump. Licht’s tenure also featured him first demoting Lemon from primetime to mornings, and then pushing the veteran anchor out following a spate of on- and off-screen controversies.
Asked if he’s spoken to Licht since the executive’s ouster from CNN, Lemon merely said he hadn’t. Swisher then wondered if he felt redemption over Licht’s departure in June.
“Yes, I do,” Lemon replied. “Read the story and you speak to the people who are there, and I think people get what happened. All you have to do is read The Atlantic story, read the subsequent stories that came out, and how it played out. They’re gone now. So do I feel vindicated in that sense? Yes, I do.”
Lemon, of course, was referencing the widely reported and devastating profile of Licht by The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta, which portrayed Licht as aloof, obsessed with his predecessor Jeff Zucker, overly critical of CNN’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, and told Trump to “have fun” before the disastrous town hall. The embarrassing 15,000-word article was apparently the last straw for the higher-ups, even after Licht groveled to staff and promised to do better, and he was gone days after its publication.
As for the controversy that helped lead to his own dismissal, Lemon was asked why he didn’t fully apologize on-air for saying GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley wasn’t in her “prime” because she is in her early fifties.
“So I’m going to speak the truth now: I was never allowed to address the issue on the air,” Lemon claimed. “I wish that I could have, but I was never allowed to.”
After insisting at the time that women are only in their prime during their twenties and thirties, Lemon eventually apologized via a tweet and behind the scenes amid the backlash. He was briefly benched from CNN This Morning and then forced to undergo “formal training” over the sexism scandal. Two months later, he was out at CNN.
Lemon, who has vacationed with Zucker recently and retained Zucker’s girlfriend (and former CNN executive) Allison Gollust as a comms specialist, also gushed over Zucker’s tenure at CNN and said nobody could run the network better than the ex-CNN chief.
“There isn’t a better person alive who could run CNN, and I don’t know if there’s anyone who could do it. Look, someone can do it. I don’t know if they’ll do it well, but I think the best person to run CNN was and would be Jeff Zucker,” he exclaimed, adding: “If anyone could save CNN if it needs saving, if you want to put it in that context, it would be Jeff Zucker.”
In the end, Lemon teased about his next endeavors, suggesting podcasting was in his future while simultaneously hinting that he could be back on TV sooner rather than later.
“I was having dinner with an old friend last night who was in television who ran a network for a long time, and he said that, just recently, that streaming and digital or online had surpassed linear television for the first time,” Lemon stated. “So that gives you an indication to where I’m going.”
He continued: “I don’t know if it’s streaming. It’s going to be probably streaming and in the digital space. It doesn’t mean that I don’t want to work in traditional, linear television anymore, especially over the next 14 months. I expect to have a voice. So stay tuned for that.”
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