After Don Lemon was ousted from CNN over a sexist comment about Nikki Haley—and within the wake of an exposé about his allegedly poor remedy of feminine colleagues—it made a sure sense when information broke he’d be partnering with Elon Musk to convey his personal present to X (previously Twitter). On the opposite aspect of the aisle, ousted Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson was doing the identical. Musk has been advocating to make the platform pleasant for video, and beginning by funding reveals for a bunch of semi-disgraced dudes is a particularly Musk-like method to do it. Truthfully, none of what’s gone down between Lemon and Musk has been a shock, together with the truth that the partnership rapidly fell aside.
Lemon’s declare final Wednesday is that Musk abruptly canceled The Don Lemon Show with the temporary textual content, “Contract terminated,” following a sit-down interview Lemon carried out with the X CEO. Lemon thinks he was dropped due to their dialog. A New York Post article claimed that it was as a result of Lemon made too many calls for, “together with a free Tesla Cybertruck, a $5 million upfront fee on prime of an $8 million wage, an fairness stake within the multibillion-dollar firm, and the correct to approve any adjustments in X coverage because it pertains to information content material.” (“This is absolute, full utter nonsense with out an iota of reality to it,” Lemon’s agent advised the outlet.) Musk, in the meantime, endorsed the tabloid caricature of Lemon’s “calls for” by calling the journalist “Don ‘Veruca Salt’ [lemon emoji]” on Twitter/X. However, Musk additionally claimed “his method was principally simply ‘CNN, however on social media’, which doesn’t work, as evidenced by the truth that CNN is dying. And, as a substitute of it being the true Don Lemon, it was actually simply Jeff Zucker speaking via Don, so lacked authenticity” (per The Hollywood Reporter).
Despite being ousted from X, Lemon went forward with the discharge of the contentious interview on Monday. He pressed Musk about his drug use (notably relating to ketamine), his relationship to Donald Trump, his commentary in opposition to range, fairness, and inclusion packages, and above all, the proliferation of hate speech on the X platform. “I don’t should reply these questions,” Musk mentioned in a clip Lemon previewed earlier than releasing the episode (through The Wall Street Journal). “I don’t should reply questions from reporters. Don, the one cause I’m doing this interview is since you’re on the X platform and also you requested for it. Otherwise, I’d not do that interview.”
The full extent of Musk’s remarks are featured within the full sit-down. The tech titan pushed again on Lemon’s assertions that hate speech has gone up since he took over Twitter, saying that “what issues is, was that put up given excessive visibility, or did one particular person see it? … If you take a look at what number of instances hate content material was seen on our platform, it’s down considerably.” Musk professed his perception that “moderation is a propaganda phrase for censorship,” and mentioned the social media web site’s coverage is, “If it’s not unlawful, we’re not gonna take it down. If it’s not unlawful, we’re placing our thumb on the dimensions and being censors.”
In its assertion on the top of the partnership, the corporate mentioned, “X is a platform that champions free speech, and we’re proud to supply an open surroundings for numerous voices and views. The Don Lemon Show is welcome to publish its content material on X, with out censorship, as we imagine in offering a platform for creators to scale their work and join with new communities. However, like every enterprise, we reserve the correct to make selections about our enterprise partnerships, and after cautious consideration, X determined to not enter right into a industrial partnership with the present.”
Meanwhile, “Don has a cope with X and expects to be paid for it,” Lemon’s crew mentioned in an announcement (through WSJ). “If we’ve to go to courtroom we’ll.”
