Despite the rather ignominious circumstances under which news anchor Don Lemon parted ways with CNN last April, it looks like he’s going to get the last laugh after all.
As reported Tuesday on entertainment news site The Wrap, CNN has agreed to pay their former anchor $24.5 million as part of the ongoing settlement surrounding his ouster from the network.
According to unnamed sources who spoke to The Wrap, this enormous sum is the amount of money Lemon would have received had he completed the remaining 3 and a half years of his CNN contract.
Now, the series of embarrassing incidents that led to the man who had long been one of the most recognizable faces of the network is undoubtedly familiar to most readers, but let’s briefly recap the circumstances of his ouster.
First, Lemon was removed from his popular (well, for CNN) primetime show to co-host “CNN This Morning” alongside Kaitlan Collins and Poppy Harlow. During one show, he insisted that Republican candidate Nikki Haley, who was then 51, “isn’t in her prime, sorry.”
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Almost immediately following that show, Lemon was dismissed by CNN — something he did not hesitate to call out publicly.
He contended, “I would have thought that someone in management would have had the decency to tell me directly,” referencing the fact that his agent broke the news of his termination to him.
In a later interview he said, “[CNN] did not want me to be a part of [their plans for the network], and I think that has, from what has played out publicly as it relates to CNN, as it relates to management, and what they’re doing now, I think that it’s obvious that they didn’t want me to be a part of that.”
Don’t be too sad for Lemon, though. Outside his mind-bogglingly huge settlement, he, like Tucker Carlson, is set to debut his own show — “The Don Lemon Show” — on the social media platform X in a few weeks.
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Speaking of that settlement, though, while this is good news for the infamous former CNN personality, it’s bad news for his former network.
CNN has been struggling over the past few years, hemorrhaging money on bad investments and worse ideas while cable news becomes more and more irrelevant to the average American.
CNN’s top talent has faced severe salary cuts as their exorbitant salaries became much less justifiable as networks like Fox, MSNBC, and even Jim and Tammy Bakker’s INSP network routinely trounce CNN in the ratings.
Even hiring basketball star Charles Barkley to host a primetime show with Gayle King has been a ratings flop, being outperformed by reruns of “South Park” and “Seinfeld,” and in January of 2024, significant financial losses forced CNN to close their Philippine’s branch after 9 years.
Considering the network’s current failure to regain its lost relevance (and revenue), the last thing they needed was to pay their disgraced former host a multi-million dollar settlement.
And yet, here they are.
Clearly few care about CNN anymore, especially as they lose their formerly most popular hosts.
The American people are tired of cable news shows spreading obviously biased information in favor of liberals and the Democratic Party and are increasingly turning to independent news sites, like the Daily Wire and Tucker Carlson‘s show on X.
Lemon’s ouster and enormous financial settlement are a simply a symptom of CNN’s larger problems.
And, in conjunction with recent news, it seems CNN’s actions are only serving to hasten its inevitable decline.
