For the small handful of people who stayed up late past midnight Eastern Thursday into Friday on CNN, the conclusion of its Democratic National Convention (DNC) coverage saw some very strange scenes break out.
The first such derailment of the network’s DNC analysis came upon returning from commercial break just past 1:20 a.m. Eastern when senior political correspondent Brianna Keilar was seen next to CNN Tonight host Don Lemon’s panel dancing and leading the entire CNN Grill at Xfinity Live in Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline.
Lemon eventually gave up and admitted he had lost control of the show and dropped out to allow the cameras to pan around the bar as everyone from Wolf Blitzer to Dana Bash to Gloria Borger to Sally Kohn to Mark Preston to our own Jeffrey Lord danced away while enjoying a slew of adult beverages.
While many fellow conservatives have blasted CNN for partying in celebration of Hillary Clinton’s presidential nomination, I’ll put myself out there and opine that this line of thinking was both incredibly overblown and simplistic.
Having watched hours upon hours of coverage over both conventions, I’ve noticed that many of the CNN personalities had been on the road in both Cleveland and Philadelphia working long hours and it’s fair to say most people would want to blow off some steam after two weeks of being away from home focusing on two of the biggest political stories of the year.
Roughly an hour later, Triumph the Comic Insult Dog crashed the set and again derailed Lemon and his “Political Dream Team” by exclaiming that he “might as well be on the TV show no one’s watching.”
After Lemon appeared to have decided that he would allow Triumph to stick around, Triumph informed the audience that he had watched Clinton’s speech but “speaking of dreaming, I fell asleep only a couple of times.”
He then took this shot at Clinton running mate and Democratic Virginia Senator Tim Kaine: “You know who really was the dream candidate? Hillary’s dream vice — they’re calling Tim Kaine. Hillary’s dream vice president because if he talks for more than 30 seconds, you go into a REM state!”
The out-of-control puppet suddenly screamed at the audience and complained that “nobody pays attention to Don Lemon” who’s an “over night legend.” Somehow, he organized a bar-wide chant of Lemon before asking the aforementioned CNN host this hilarious question: “Do they even fair you fairly or do they spend all their money shrinking Anderson Cooper's black t-shirts?”
“I think that's very easily done. We do them in a dryer — Wolf Blitzer does them in a dryer in The Situation Room. We wash them and then we dry them in The Situation Room,” Lemon responded.
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With the segment lost, Lemon demanded that Triumph leave or “we’re going to have security kick you out” even though “I love you” but has spent too long “barking up the wrong tree here, brother.”
“What’s the matter? You're intimidated when people chant for Don Lemon...I'm just trying to give Don Lemon the respect he deserves,” Triumph shot back and departed as Lemon went to commercial break.
So, while there were plenty of crazy moments on late-night MSNBC (here, here, and here), CNN brought some eye-opening and possibly kinky moments of their own on the last night of the DNC.
