CNN host Don Lemon insisted that he was not being demoted following his demotion from a primetime evening slot to co-hosting a morning show with two female journalists.
“This is not someone saying, ‘You must move to the right, Don Lemon, you must not be so, uh — give so much of your perspective,'” Lemon said. “None of that has happened, all of that is fodder for Twitter, which is not real. So stop it, I was not demoted. None of that.”
“This is an opportunity, this is a promotion, this is an opportunity to create something around me, and I get to work with two great ladies, who you know,” Lemon said, referring to his new co-hosts Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins.
CNN’s @DonLemon on being demoted from primetime to the AM: “I was not demoted” pic.twitter.com/WgatfCzPLT
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 16, 2022
A White House correspondent for CNN who called former President Donald Trump a “dishonest demagogue” abruptly exited the network earlier this month, just days after “Reliable Sources” anchor and liberal activist Brian Stelter was unceremoniously fired.
Trump reacted to the news by telling Fox News Digital that Harwood was a third-rate talent who never caught on because people didn’t trust or believe in him.”
“The media needs people who are reliable and truthful in order to save its reputation,” Trump added. “There is almost nothing more important than that to happen for our Country. Harwood was polarizing and sadly, very untalented.”
CNN fired Brian Stelter, who hosted the network’s flagship “Reliable Sources” program for nearly a decade and was CNN’s chief media correspondent, last month.
Rumors that Stelter’s time at the network may be drawing to a close were first sparked when the left wing cable network became part of the Discovery family of companies following a merger that completed in April of this year. The new owners reportedly seek to make CNN less hyper partisan, and longtime host Chris Cuomo and CNN boss Jeff Zucker – who Stelter was famously loyal to – both left in the days leading up to and after the merger completed.
