The battle of Don Lemon vs. Elon Musk heats up with release of hour-long interview

After Don Lemon was ousted from CNN over a sexist remark about Nikki Haley—and in the wake of an exposé about his allegedly poor treatment of female colleagues—it made a certain sense when news broke he’d be partnering with Elon Musk to bring his own show to X (formerly Twitter). On the other side of the aisle, ousted Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson was doing the same. Musk has been advocating to make the platform friendly for video, and starting by funding shows for a bunch of semi-disgraced dudes is an extremely Musk-like way to do it. Truthfully, none of what’s gone down between Lemon and Musk has been a surprise, including the fact that the partnership quickly fell apart.

Lemon’s claim last Wednesday is that Musk abruptly canceled The Don Lemon Show with the brief text, “Contract terminated,” following a sit-down interview Lemon conducted with the X CEO. Lemon thinks he was dropped because of their conversation. A New York Post article claimed that it was because Lemon made too many demands, “including a free Tesla Cybertruck, a $5 million upfront payment on top of an $8 million salary, an equity stake in the multibillion-dollar company, and the right to approve any changes in X policy as it relates to news content.” (“This is absolute, complete utter nonsense without an iota of truth to it,” Lemon’s agent told the outlet.) Musk, meanwhile, endorsed the tabloid caricature of Lemon’s “demands” by calling the journalist “Don ‘Veruca Salt’ [lemon emoji]” on Twitter/X. However, Musk also claimed “his approach was basically just ‘CNN, but on social media’, which doesn’t work, as evidenced by the fact that CNN is dying. And, instead of it being the real Don Lemon, it was really just Jeff Zucker talking through Don, so lacked authenticity” (per The Hollywood Reporter).

Despite being ousted from X, Lemon went ahead with the release of the contentious interview on Monday. He pressed Musk about his drug use (particularly regarding ketamine), his relationship to Donald Trump, his commentary against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and above all, the proliferation of hate speech on the X platform. “I don’t have to answer these questions,” Musk said in a clip Lemon previewed before releasing the episode (via The Wall Street Journal). “I don’t have to answer questions from reporters. Don, the only reason I’m doing this interview is because you’re on the X platform and you asked for it. Otherwise, I would not do this interview.”

The full extent of Musk’s remarks are featured in the full sit-down. The tech titan pushed back on Lemon’s assertions that hate speech has gone up since he took over Twitter, saying that “what matters is, was that post given high visibility, or did one person see it? … If you look at how many times hate content was viewed on our platform, it is down substantially.” Musk professed his belief that “moderation is a propaganda word for censorship,” and said the social media site’s policy is, “If it’s not illegal, we’re not gonna take it down. If it’s not illegal, we’re putting our thumb on the scale and being censors.”

In its statement on the end of the partnership, the company said, “X is a platform that champions free speech, and we’re proud to provide an open environment for diverse voices and perspectives. The Don Lemon Show is welcome to publish its content on X, without censorship, as we believe in providing a platform for creators to scale their work and connect with new communities. However, like any enterprise, we reserve the right to make decisions about our business partnerships, and after careful consideration, X decided not to enter into a commercial partnership with the show.”

Meanwhile, “Don has a deal with X and expects to be paid for it,” Lemon’s team said in a statement (via WSJ). “If we have to go to court we will.”