Longtime CNN anchor Don Lemon was famously fired in April 2023 for spewing misogynistic comments on the air and other indiscretions. However, today he feels a sense of vindication after the leadership was also eventually ousted.
Not long after Lemon was unceremoniously released from the network, CNN head boss Chris Licht was fired by Warner Bros. Discovery just two months after an unflattering narrative of him was published in The Atlantic combined with staff mutiny.
“Read the story, and you speak to the people who are there, and I think people get what happened,” Lemon told Deadline. “All you have to do is is read The Atlantic story. Read the subsequent stories that came out, and you know, how it played out, and they are gone now. So do I feel vindicated in that sense? Yes, I do.”
In fact, Lemon believes that it will be hard to replace Licht’s legendary predecessor.
“I think the best person to run CNN was and would be Jeff Zucker,” Lemon said. “Do I think he’s going to go back? No. Do I think he’s going to buy it? You’d have to ask him. I doubt it. I don’t talk to him about those things. But why would he, in this environment, and considering what’s happening now? I mean, why would he want to go back and why would he subject himself to that.”
Lemon hinted that he is getting close to reemerging with his next gig, though he wants to go in a different direction this time.
“I want to do something next that scares the s— out of me,” Lemon said. “I had a very successful career in cable news for a very long time. I got to do and say exactly what I wanted to. I have and had a very important voice that most people get to hear on that platform, and still don’t. But I am going to lean in to the future of this medium and do something that scares me.”
“I don’t want to keep preaching to the choir. And I don’t want to keep preaching to a diminishing audience.”
