CNN has paid Don Lemon a whopping $24.5 million to go their separate ways.
According to TheWrap, the 57-year-old will earn the multi-million-dollar sum as it’s what he would make in his final contract.
Lemon drew controversy with his employer when he moved from his regular primetime slot to the morning show alongside Poppy Harlow and Caitlyn Collins.
The anchor then implied that 51-year-old Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was past her prime.
“Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime, sorry. When a woman is considered to be in her prime — in her 20s, 30s and maybe her 40s.”
Don Lemon’s Comments Cost Him His Job
CNN fired Lemon shortly after the comments, and he vented his frustration on social media.
“It is clear that there are some larger issues at play… I would have thought that someone in management would have had the decency to tell me directly.”
Lemon then argued that he and CNN were headed in different directions.
“CNN, the strategy and their content and the direction they wanted to go in, I was not a part of that. They did not want me to be a part of that, 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 Lemon is currently readying a new show on Elon Musk’s X.
Titled “The Don Lemon Show,” it will let the anchor be “bigger, bolder, freer.”
The show will also “be available to everyone, easily, whenever and wherever you want it, streaming on the platforms where conversations are happening….This is just the beginning so stay tuned.”
