Don Lemon continues to engage in damage control after his new X show imploded before it got off the launching pad and he now claims that he was initially reluctant to appear on the free speech platform.
The former CNN diva who has now been fired from his last two high-profile gigs appeared on left-leaning outlet Mediaite’s new “Press Club” podcast where he told host Aidan McLaughlin that Elon Musk spent months “enticing” him, seeming to suggest that the X owner was practically begging for him to come onboard.
“Well, a lot of it was very public, as you know,” Lemon said when asked how the deal came together. “I mean, you read Twitter. Elon Musk reached out, he tweeted several times, ‘It’d be great to have Don Lemon come on,’ and he also said Rachel Maddow, and, ‘You should be doing what Tucker’s doing.'”
(Video: YouTube/Mediaite)
“A couple of people reached out to me and said, ‘You should do this. This is great.’ Some of them very important people with big names, I won’t give them up,” he continued. “At first I said no, because when I left CNN, I wanted to take some time off to figure out what I wanted to do. And I did that. I made a commitment to myself, and I really didn’t think about finding another job or getting another job or pursuing another job.”
“You took the summer off,” McLaughlin said.
“I took the summer off,” Lemon acknowledged. “It was really amazing. Listen, after 17 years, of being at the nexus of every big story in the world, it was a little different. But once I got into it, I really got into it and I realized well this is really nice. And then I started thinking halfway through, I better get back to work because I’m loving this way too much.”
“So at first I said no, and then once Linda Yaccarino got on board, was hired for X, they began to engage with my representatives and after several months of enticing and negotiations and all of that, I decided to join the platform,” the ex-host said.
Lemon’s X show was dead on arrival, having insulted Musk during an interview that he peddled to his ex-employer and amid reports of his outrageous demands.
Don Lemon gets terminated from CNN, secures a show on X, requests an interview with Elon Musk, and successfully lands it. Then he goes back to CNN and trash talks about Musk.
Who the fuck does that? pic.twitter.com/QkVtNM4ZV5
— I Meme Therefore I Am (@ImMeme0) March 14, 2024
He was also asking for “a free Tesla Cybertruck, a $5 million upfront payment on top of an $8 million salary, an equity stake in the multibillion-dollar company, and the right to approve any changes in X policy as it relates to news content, according to a report by the New York Post.
Lemon has denied the exorbitant requests.
“His approach was basically just “CNN, but on social media”, which doesn’t work, as evidenced by the fact that CNN is dying,” Musk wrote on X, explaining why it wasn’t going to work with Lemon. “And, instead of it being the real Don Lemon, it was really just Jeff Zucker talking through Don, so lacked authenticity.”
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