Don Lemon, the highly controversial CNN host who was fired from the network in 2023 after making sexist and ageist remarks about 51-year-old presidential candidate Nikki Haley on air, has reached a whopping settlement with the network.
According to a recent report by The Wrap, Lemon and CNN have reached an agreement worth $24.5 million, which is the amount he would have earned if he had completed his contract for another three and a half years. However, CNN has disputed the report and said it is incorrect. Lemon has since launched a new show on X, a platform owned by Elon Musk, where he promises to be even more outspoken and independent.
Over the years at CNN, Lemon was involved in numerous verbal kerfuffles. The last one was when he said on air that, “Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime, sorry.” His co-hosts, Kaitlyn Collins and Poppy Harlow were visibly outraged by his comments, but Lemon, saying he was uncomfortable with the age discussion, doubled down, adding that “a woman is considered to be in her prime — in her 20s, 30s and maybe her 40s.”
When fired, Lemon claimed that he was not informed of his dismissal by CNN management, but by his agent. He also accused the network of having ulterior motives for wanting him gone. CNN denied his allegations and said he was offered a chance to meet with them.
Lemon seemed to be caught off guard by his firing and suggested there were other reasons for the network’s move. “CNN, the strategy and their content and the direction they wanted to go in, I was not a part of that,” Lemon later said in a conversation with Kara Swisher.
“They did not want me to be a part of that, and I think that has, from what has played out publicly as it relates to CNN, as it relates to management, and what they’re doing now, I think that it’s obvious that they didn’t want me to be a part of that.”
Lemon had developed a penchant for saying whatever he felt like saying, regardless of how offensive that might be and had come to be known as a loose cannon at CNN.
Lemon’s firing was part of a larger move on the part of the networks in the wake of the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit that Fox News lost and that cost them an astounding 788 million dollars. “When what-will-they-say-next hosts speak, what they say next could help prompt a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit. Cable-news outfits are decommissioning their loose-cannon hosts — not to squelch free speech but to avoid wrecking revenue.”
Lemon’s termination happened around the same time as that of other highly controversial anchors Lou Dobbs and Tucker Carlson.
