Don Lemon is hitting again at Selection‘s exposé, calling claims of his “sexist” habits at CNN “patently false.”
On Wednesday, the outlet printed a report inspecting Lemon’s alleged questionable antics since he was employed by CNN in 2006. The article, titled “Don Lemon’s Misogyny at CNN, Uncovered: Malicious Texts, Mocking Feminine Co-Employees and ‘Diva-Like Conduct,'” featured interviews with a number of unnamed sources. One of many extra troubling accusations claimed that in 2008, he anonymously threatened his co-anchor when she received a high-profile project he needed.
“The story, which is riddled with patently false anecdotes and no concrete proof, is completely based mostly on unsourced, unsubstantiated, 15-year-old nameless gossip,” a spokesperson for Lemon tells Yahoo Leisure. “It is superb and disappointing that Selection could be so reckless.”
CNN is responding to particular allegations within the article as nicely.
Selection cited two sources who claimed Lemon was enraged 15 years in the past after his Reside From co-host, Kyra Phillips, was placed on project in Iraq as a substitute of him. Lemon allegedly tore “up photos and notes on prime of and inside Phillips’s desk within the information pod they shared,” the article alleges. When Phillips returned from Iraq, she purportedly obtained a textual content from an unknown quantity that stated, “Now you have crossed the road, and you are going to pay for it.” CNN launched an investigation and the texts have been supposedly traced again to Lemon, in response to the identical sources.
“Don says the incident by no means occurred and that he was by no means notified of any investigation. CNN can not corroborate the alleged occasions from 15 years in the past,” a community spokesperson tells Yahoo.
A few of Lemon’s previous co-workers went on the file to name him out. Goldie Taylor, a former CNN advisor who appeared on Lemon’s weekend present, claimed she was banned for talking out in opposition to the anchor after he made controversial feedback concerning the Black group.
“I am by no means shocked when Don will get in bother,” she advised Selection. “It makes me neither joyful nor unhappy to see him undermine his personal success. There was a time when it appeared that Black individuals have been most frequently the topic of his ire. Now, it appears to me that when he says one thing offensive, there’s virtually all the time a girl on the opposite aspect.”
A CNN rep tells Yahoo: “I am not going to weigh in on the community’s reserving practices of unpaid company a decade in the past.”
The article additionally highlighted the Jussie Smollett controversy. In 2021, it was revealed that Lemon texted Smollett two years prior that the Chicago Police Division didn’t consider the Empire star was the sufferer of a racist and homophobic assault. However was Lemon warning Smollett, or attempting to get data to interrupt on Don Lemon Tonight? Though one supply advised Selection that Lemon “ought to have been benched” amid the community’s investigation, CNN is standing by its on-air star.
“CNN reviewed the incident in query on the time and located that any interplay was an act of journalism as Don was trying to immediate a response from Mr. Smollett and e-book him for his present,” the spokesperson notes on Wednesday.
Lastly, the final anecdote the community is responding to entails former CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien. Selection claimed that Lemon spoke derogatorily of his colleague on an editorial name greater than a decade in the past. Lemon was allegedly upset that O’Brien was tapped to host CNN’s Black in America docuseries, and in entrance of roughly 30 staff, instructed that O’Brien is not even Black.
“Don, Soledad, and others, have prior to now accurately referred to her Afro-Cuban heritage as it’s a distinctive a part of her private story. However Don denies making any associated comment in a derogatory manner,” a rep for CNN says.
Though O’Brien wasn’t on the editorial name in query, she made her emotions about Lemon clear. “Don has lengthy had a behavior of claiming idiotic and inaccurate issues, so it sounds fairly on model for him,” she advised Selection.
Lemon discovered himself within the information regularly over the previous a number of months. He was sidelined in February for declaring that 51-year-old Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley “is not in her prime.” He made “sexist” remarks concerning the U.S. girls’s soccer group in February, and it has been speculated he is not getting alongside together with his CNN This Morning co-hosts Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins. After the Haley incident, Yahoo confirmed Lemon will endure “formal coaching” offered by CNN, however specifics weren’t disclosed.
