Colleagues critical of CNN’s Don Lemon took their revenge on the embattled host, spilling the beans about his past behavior.
Lemon stands accused of misogyny, sending threatening texts to female coworkers, and rude, diva-like behavior, according to a report in Variety.
One source told the outlet, quoting one of Lemon’s female colleagues: “She thinks he’s an ass, he was always rude, dismissive and really unfamiliar with the content being discussed.”
Another said: “That was the beginning of when you knew that Don was kind of volatile and didn’t say good things about women.”
Another said: “I saw a new Don emerging, and I didn’t like the new Don. He likes celebrity.
“He likes fame, likes power. He was no longer the same person.”
He’s also annoyed co-workers by allegedly acting like some sort of media/news diva, the report claimed.
“That led to a come-to-Jesus moment,” a former executive said. “Don was told, ‘Look, you’ve got to address your behavior. Your performance as a reporter is great. It’s your behavior that’s gotta improve. It’s what’s going to derail you if you’re not careful.’”
Variety reported:
One night while dining with members of the news team, she received the first of two threatening text messages from an unknown number on her flip phone that warned, “Now you’ve crossed the line, and you’re going to pay for it.”
Phillips was visibly rattled and quickly enlisted CNN’s higher ups to identify the sender. Remarkably, the texts were traced back to Lemon, according to those same sources.”
More troubling was his misogynistic behavior, multiple sources say. Lemon called one of his producers fat to her face. Not long before he was identified as sending threatening texts to Phillips, he mocked Grace on air by mimicking her, shocking fellow colleagues.
Goldie Taylor, a former CNN consultant who said she was blacklisted for calling out Lemon, said:
“I’m never surprised when Don gets in trouble. It makes me neither happy nor sad to see him undermine his own success. There was a time when it appeared that black people were most often the subject of his ire.
“Now, it seems to me that when he says something offensive, there’s almost always a woman on the other side,” Taylor added.