Don Lemon, Former CNN Anchor, Will Launch New Show On Elon Musk's X
Former CNN personality Don Lemon is returning to broadcasting via the website formerly known as Twitter.
Lemon announced Tuesday that he has partnered with X for a new streaming series, aptly titled The Don Lemon Show.
"I've heard you... and today I am back, bigger, bolder, freer!" Lemon wrote on Elon Musk's social media platform. "My new media company's first project is The Don Lemon Show. It will be available to everyone, easily, whenever and wherever you want it, streaming on the platforms where the conversations are happening. And you'll find it first on X, the biggest space for free space in the world.
"I know now more than ever that we need a place for honest debate and discussion without the hall monitors," he posited. "This is just the beginning so stay tuned."
A premiere date has not yet been revealed.
CNN parted ways with Lemon in April. Six weeks later, Chris Licht stepped down as Chairman and CEO of CNN Global following a less-than-flattering profile in The Atlantic that painted him as an executive obsessed with following Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav's marching orders to better platform Republican views.
"I don't believe in platforming liars and bigots, 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, people who are abiding by the Constitution," Lemon said in his first post-CNN interview in June. "I think that would be a dereliction of journalistic duty to do those sorts of things.
"That is what has gotten me to this point, and that is what is going to carry me forward," Lemon maintained at the time. "To know that I am doing the right thing, to know that I am standing up and abiding by the Constitution, which my profession demands that I do because we are listed in the First Amendment of the Constitution — 'freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of the press.'"
Lemon's CNN termination came three weeks after our sister site Variety published an exposé in which more than a dozen of Lemon's former and current colleagues outlined a pattern of allegedly misogynistic, inappropriate and "diva-like" behavior at the cable news network, and more than two months after he received backlash for a sexist statement he made on CNN This Morning in February.
He previously told Extra that he had "no regrets" about his 17-year stint at CNN. "I live my life with no regrets, and whatever I did, I did, and I owned," he said. "I don't look back and don't want to change things in the past... Onward."
In addition to Lemon, X, according to The Hollywood Reporter, has inked deals with former congresswomen Tulsi Gabbard and former Fox Sports host Jim Rome, who will also headline shows for Musk's controversial platform.