Justin Baragona at the leftist Daily Beast was very excited that fired CNN host Don Lemon surfaced to discuss his ouster on Kara Swisher's Pivot podcast. The big takeaway was that Lemon felt "vindicated" that CEO Chris Licht was let go after letting him go. In other words, the boss who claimed a devotion to changing CNN's tone to be less viciously anti-Trump and anti-Republican was defeated by the remaining internal forces of Jeff Zucker.
Swisher wondered if Lemon felt vindicated over Licht’s departure in June. Lemon brought up the massive Tim Alberta piece on Licht:
“Yes, I do,” Lemon replied. “Read the story, and you speak to the people who are there, and I think people get what happened. All you have to do is read The Atlantic story, read the subsequent stories that came out, and you know, how it played out. They’re gone now. So do I feel vindicated in that sense? Yes, I do.”
Swisher's on Team Lemon on this. In June, she argued on her podcast that CNN overlord David Zaslav "needs to get the f—k out of the way" and "let the professionals take over" and try to fix CNN.
Swisher began her time with Lemon by joking "I'm in my prime," and then suggested she's been in her prime since she was born. Lemon was asked why he didn’t fully apologize on-air for saying GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley wasn’t in her “prime” because she is in her early fifties.
“So I’m going to speak the truth now: I was never allowed to address the issue on the air,” Lemon claimed. “I wish that I could have, but I was never allowed to.”
Lemon, who Baragona underlined "has vacationed with Zucker recently and retained Zucker’s girlfriend (and former CNN executive) Allison Gollust as a comms specialist," predictably gushed over Zucker’s Trump-trashing regime at CNN and said nobody could run the network better.
“There isn’t a better person alive who could run CNN, and I don’t know if there’s anyone who could do it. Look, someone can do it. I don’t know if they’ll do it well, but I think the best person to run CNN was and would be Jeff Zucker,” he exclaimed, adding: “If anyone could save CNN if it needs saving, if you want to put it in that context, it would be Jeff Zucker.”
Lemon nevertheless admitted "we all live in bubbles," and now when he talks to people, he said they don't care about Trump indictments, that they don't follow it. (So they're not glued to CNN.) They talk about crime, homelessness, and mental health.
“They’re worried about walking down the street in certain parts of the country, in certain cities. They want to be able to afford their families [sic]. How high rents are, how mortgage rates,” the ex-CNN star proclaimed. “That’s what they talk to me about, and they say they miss me on CNN.”
Lemon even said people are "over" the Trump obsession. People understand Trump's unethical, maybe a "criminal" -- but "they've moved on with their lives."
