CNN said the bombshell story was based on “clearly false stories.”
CNN reporter Don Lemon got in trouble earlier this year for making a sexist remark about women. But according to a new story, that wasn’t the first time he’s acted out at work.
Variety published a shocking article about the anchor’s past on Wednesday. The article said that the anchor had sent threatening text messages to a coworker and had repeatedly behaved in a “diva-like” way toward women. CNN has called the accusations “clearly false anecdotes.”
In 2008, Lemon co-hosted the weekend CNN show “Live From” with Kyra Phillips. Their dislike of each other was so strong that Variety called it “concerning.”
“Tensions between the two kept getting worse for months. Tatiana Siegel of Variety wrote, “A ‘Live From’ producer and a newsroom supervisor had to take Don Lemon off the air more than once during a commercial break because of the anchor’s provocative behavior.”
“While Phillips was on assignment in Iraq, a high-profile job that Lemon wanted, he showed his anger at not getting it by tearing up pictures and notes on Phillips’ desk and inside it, according to two people who worked there at the time. When she came back from Iraq, things got even stranger,” Siegel said. “One night while she was out to dinner with members of the news team, she got the first of two threatening text messages from an unknown number. It said, ‘Now you’ve crossed the line, and you’re going to pay for it,’ and it was the first of two such messages.
Variety says that Phillips was clearly upset and quickly asked CNN’s higher-ups to find out who sent the message.
“It was amazing that the texts could be tracked back to Lemon, based on the same sources. A human resources review was started, but the results were never shared with the rising number of employees who knew about the situation. As a result, Lemon was suddenly moved from co-anchoring with Phillips to the weekends. By any objective measure, it was a downgrade, and everyone knew it was a punishment,” Siegel wrote.
A CNN spokesman told Variety, “Don says that the alleged incident never happened and that he was never told that there was an investigation.” CNN can’t back up what it says happened 15 years ago.
Phillips, who works for ABC News now, wouldn’t say anything to Variety. Fox News Digital asked ABC News for a response, but they didn’t answer right away.
Lemon didn’t work with female co-anchors again until 2022, when CNN CEO Chris Licht moved him from evening to the brand-new “CNN This Morning” with Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins.
“CNN This Morning” hasn’t been able to get people, and it’s come to be known as a sign of internal chaos. In February, Lemon upset CNN employees when he said that Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, was “past her prime” at age 51. Lemon tried to say he was sorry the next morning during the network’s morning editorial call, but it didn’t go over well. His words had been widely criticized for being sexist.
A CNN source told Fox News Digital at the time, “That was the saddest attempt at an apology I’ve ever heard in my life.” “F—–g a–hole.”
Lemon was put on the bench for a few days, but he kept upsetting his teammates when he spent his time off relaxing on a Miami beach while the cameras watched.
“The episode has brought to light Lemon’s bad behavior toward women and his lack of professionalism, which goes back nearly 20 years. Variety talked to more than a dozen current and past coworkers, and they made a picture of a journalist who broke the rules, got close to people in power, and was openly mean to many of his female coworkers. “Each time, he seemed to use his charm to get out of having to face any real consequences,” Siegel wrote.
Lemon and Collins have also argued on air, and a clip from February went viral in which Lemon wouldn’t let the show go to commercial while attacking Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., after Collins had just finished an interview with him. As Harlow praised Collins’s questioning skills and said “moving on,” Lemon said “not moving on” and started talking about having a “shared reality.” He also told the people in charge of the show to stop playing music so he could talk.
This happened after Lemon said that the men’s team should get paid more than the women’s team because they are “more interesting.”
Variety said that Lemon’s coworkers think of him as a “diva” and a “shameless name dropper” who dated a much younger male junior employee in the open for a long time before he came out of the closet.
“His behavior toward women was more disturbing, according to many sources. Lemon told one of his producers that she was fat in front of her. Not long before he was caught sending threatening texts to Phillips, he made fun of Nancy Grace on air by imitating her. This shocked his coworkers, Siegel wrote, before quoting an alleged witness to the Grace situation who said, “That was the first time you knew that Don was kind of volatile and didn’t say nice things about women.”
Variety also said that Lemon told multiple staff members that former CNN reporter Soledad O’Brien “isn’t black” when she was chosen to host the popular documentary series “Black in America.”
O’Brien didn’t exactly say that the claim was false.
“Don has always had a tendency to say stupid and wrong things, so it sounds about right,” she told Variety.
A CNN spokeswoman said, “Don, Soledad, and others have talked about her Afro-Cuban background in the past because it is a unique part of her story.” But Don says he never said anything bad about the subject.
When asked about the bombshell story, CNN ripped into Variety.
“The story, which is full of obviously false stories and has no real proof, is based on unnamed 15-year-old gossip with no sources or proof. A CNN representative told Fox News Digital, “It’s shocking and disappointing that Variety would be so careless.”
Even though his numbers are terrible and he has made a lot of controversial comments about women, both on and off the show, Lemon is still one of the faces of CNN. Last week, only 360,000 people watched Lemon’s “CNN This Morning,” while 1.9 million people watched “FOX & Friends.”