Don Lemon launches new show after CNN departure
News of "The Don Lemon Show" comes nine months after CNN fired the host in what he claimed was an unexpected move.
Don Lemon is taking his talents to X.
On Tuesday, the former CNN anchor took to the social media platform to announce that he is “back bigger, bolder, freer!” as he returns with this new media company and its first project, “The Don Lemon Show,” USA Today reported.
Lemon encouraged people to tune in as he explained his goal of creating a space free from “hall monitors” for open conversation and debate.
Lemon’s career news comes nine months after CNN parted ways with the host after 17 years. At the time, Lemon faced criticism about a heated on-air conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican presidential candidate. He co-anchored “CNN This Morning” with Kaitlan Collins and Poppy Harlow for about six months before his April 2023 departure, according to USA Today.
Former CEO Chris Licht, who left CNN in June, expressed well wishes to Lemon then in an email to the staff, noting the network’s former host would “forever be a part of the CNN family.”
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In an exclusive post-CNN interview in July with news affiliate ABC24, Lemon addressed his departure, saying he has an obligation as a journalist to tell the truth, stand up for what is right, and “abide by the promises of the Constitution,” People reported.
Lemon also said he doesn’t support “platforming liars and bigots and insurrectionists and election deniers, and putting them on the same footing as people who are telling the truth, people who are fighting for what’s right” and abiding by long-held law.
That kind of reporting, he declared, goes against his values as a journalist. Those values have brought him this far, knowing “that I am doing the right thing, that I am standing up and abiding by the Constitution,” Lemon said, according to People, “which my profession demands that I do because we are listed in the First Amendment of the Constitution, which is freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of the press.”
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