Don Lemon Says He Told X ‘No’ At First — Then Musk Spent ‘Months of Enticing and Negotiations’

Ex-CNN host Don Lemon told Mediaite he refused Twitter/X at first, but joined Elon Musk’s platform after “several months of enticing and negotiations.”

Lemon is back in the news in a big way after his spectacular interview of Musk led to an even more spectacular rapid unscheduled disassembly (in Musk-ese) of their deal for launching Lemon’s show.

Lemon was a guest on this week’s edition of Mediaite’s new Press Club podcast, hosted by Aidan McLaughlin. McLaughlin led off by asking how the Musk deal came together, and Lemon revealed he was lobbied heavily before he agreed to sign up:

Aidan McLaughlin: I want to talk about the tremendous launch of your new show. I want to start at the way beginning. How did that deal come together with Elon Musk?

Don Lemon: Well, a lot of it was very public, as you know. I mean, you read Twitter. Elon Musk reached out, he tweeted several times, ‘It’d be great to have Don Lemon come on,’ and he also said Rachel Maddow, and, ‘You should be doing what Tucker’s doing.’ A couple of people reached out to me and said, ‘You should do this. This is great.’ Some of them very important people with big names, I won’t give them up. At first I said no, because when I left CNN, I wanted to take some time off to figure out what I wanted to do. And I did that. I made a commitment to myself, and I really didn’t think about finding another job or getting another job or pursuing another job.

You took the summer off.

I took the summer off. It was really amazing. Listen, after 17 years, being at the nexus of every big story in the world, it was a little different. But once I got into it, I really got into it and I realized well this is really nice. And then I started thinking halfway through, I better get back to work because I’m loving this way too much. So at first I said no, and then once Linda Yaccarino got on board, was hired for X, they began to engage with my representatives and after several months of enticing and negotiations and all of that, I decided to join the platform.

Watch above via Mediaite’s new Press Club podcast. Watch the full episode here.

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