Don Lemon is not a team player, we learn. In fact, a senior executive during his time at CNN has said, “As fast as you could make a rule, Don would bend it.” Now his blatant misogyny and diva-like behavior are being exposed. Yet like a cat with nine lives, after many controversies, warnings, and scandals, he survives the cuts at the network.
Just this past February 16, the “CNN This Morning,” host got himself in hot water for the umpteenth time when he referred to declared presidential candidate Nikki Haley on air as “past her prime.” His comment seemed to refer implicitly to Haley’s appearance and age in a derogatory way and it set off a firestorm of criticism that he apparently dismissed as inconsequential until he was suspended for 5 days and forced to apologize both on Twitter and internally at CNN. CNN Chair Chris Licht said that the comments he made on air were “unacceptable, upsetting and unfair to his co-hosts.”
Now, multiple sources talk about his long-standing and troubling misogynistic behavior. Variety reports that the history of his sexism is indeed long. Lemon called one of his producers fat to her face. Already in 2008, not long before he was identified as sending threatening texts to Kyra Phillips, his more popular co-anchor on CNN’s “Live From” weekday show, he mocked Nancy Grace on air by mimicking her, shocking fellow colleagues. Grace declined comment but a person close to her tells Variety that “she thinks he’s an ass” and that he was always “rude, dismissive and really unfamiliar with the [news] content being discussed.”
When he wasn’t shocking his cohorts, he was annoying them with “diva-like behavior,” says one, like skipping editorial calls, showing up late to the newsroom or just generally exhibiting disengaged behavior. In 2009, CNN was allowed to send one journalist into the Staples Center to cover the Michael Jackson memorial. Lemon was the choice, while Anderson Cooper and O’Brien anchored outside. Sources remember Lemon complaining on social media that Cooper got more airtime.
“That led to a come-to-Jesus moment,” says another senior executive from the era. “Don was told, ‘Look, you’ve got to address your behavior. Your performance as a reporter is great. It’s your behavior that’s gotta improve. It’s what’s going to derail you if you’re not careful.’”
Goldie Taylor, a former CNN consultant who appeared frequently as a guest on Lemon’s weekend show, said she was blacklisted at the network for critiquing Lemon’s controversial comments. “I am personally banned from a network b/c, ironically enough, I dared disagree w/ a black man publicly abt black life […] I don’t throw rocks and hide my hand. That network is @CNN and the anchor is @donlemon,” she tweeted in 2016. Taylor remains steadfast in her criticism of Lemon.
“I’m never surprised when Don gets in trouble,” she tells Variety. “It makes me neither happy nor sad to see him undermine his own success. There was a time when it appeared that Black people were most often the subject of his ire. Now, it seems to me that when he says something offensive, there’s almost always a woman on the other side.”
Instead of reining in Lemon, his superiors have in the past let things slide, perhaps because he was in the habit of cozying up to the important people at his network, as for example with then-Turner Broadcasting System chairman and CEO Phil Kent. After Kent hired Jeff Zucker to run the network in 2013, Lemon only became more of a provocateur and Zucker never wavered in his support for Lemon–and Lemon amped up his misbehavior. As one source avowed to Radar Online, “He has a colossal ego.”
Still, if in the past there was a laissez-faire attitude about Lemon, those days appear to be over. Not only was he forced to apologize publicly and privately, but CNN is making him undergo “formal training.” Now, as the article in Variety demonstrates, more and more people are willing to call him to task and tell their stories. Even the King of Lies, George Santos, has refused to be interviewed by Lemon, declaring that his comments about women were in very poor taste and that he would “not sit down with someone who would say such horrible things.”
And in an ironic twist considering who George Santos is and what he has come to represent, the lying Congressman adds, “I don’t think he should be rewarded for bad behavior.”
Despite their transgressions, Don Lemon still remains planted behind the anchors’ desk—at least for now—and Santos in the House of Representatives.
Perhaps this says more about today’s society and its values than about Lemon or Santos.
