‘It Wasn’t a Gotcha Interview’: Don Lemon on Elon Musk and the Shocking Meltdown of His Deal With X

When Don Lemon was dramatically ousted from CNN he committed to taking the summer off. After all, over his 17 years at the network he had become a pervasive star, anchoring two hours of prime time programming five times a week, and then — finally and fatefully — a three-hour stretch in the early mornings as the co-host of its audacious morning show.

But it wasn’t long before Lemon abandoned his sabbatical and decided he needed to get back to news.

“I started thinking halfway through, ‘I better get back to work because I’m loving this way too much,'” Lemon said on this week’s episode of Press Club.

Lemon decided to launch his own digital venture, built around The Don Lemon Show — a program that launched on YouTube, iHeartRadio and, most notoriously, X. Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, spent months lobbying Lemon to join the social media platform where another star broadcaster excommunicated from cable news, Tucker Carlson, had made a home. According to Lemon, Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino saw the former CNN host as an advertiser-friendly media star who would lend a patina of mainstream credibility to a platform widely seen as descending into extremism and misinformation.

And then came the interview. Lemon’s first episode of the new show featured an hour-plus interrogation of Musk at Tesla’s headquarters in Austin, Texas. The conversation started off friendly and conversational. Lemon then asked about a range of subjects: SpaceX, Tesla, Musk’s use of ketamine to treat depression, misinformation and anti-Semitism on X. By the end of the interview, a stone-faced Musk repeatedly instructed Lemon to wrap up. He came very close to storming off the set.

The next day, Musk texted Lemon’s agent, UTA’s Jay Sures, that the deal between Lemon and X was off. He added some insults for good measure. Lemon broke news of the implosion of the deal last week, once again raising questions about Musk’s ability to handle scrutiny while giving the debut episode of Lemon’s show a mighty promotional boost.

Lemon joined me at Mediaite’s studios in midtown Manhattan this week to discuss all of this. We spoke about how the X deal came to be and how it fell apart, what he thinks of the interview now that it’s aired, and what’s next for his show. We also talked about his return to CNN months after he was ousted from the network, where his relationship stands with Chris Cuomo and his thoughts on Chris Licht, as well as the future of the media business at large.

Subscribe to Press Club on YouTube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Read a transcript of the conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

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.

Your first interview was with Elon Musk. How did you prepare for that? What were you thinking going into it? Do you think, ‘I’m going to give him a tough interview’?

I just wanted people to get to know about him, to learn about him. I wanted to just ask very simple questions and let him answer so that the world could get to know about him because he’s so interesting. He’s very consequential to the world, which was one reason that I was enticed into doing it because I was like, well, this is Elon Musk and say what you want, he is consequential to the world. He’s very important when you look at all the accomplishments he’s had. When you look at the satellites, the automobile industry, across several different enormous industries, he has influence. And also he had one of the largest information and social media platforms in the world, and if I had the opportunity, I believed, to make a difference on that platform and for them to amplify the work that I’m doing and for it to get out to the largest number of people possible, I thought that that was a great opportunity. That’s why I signed on, and also because they said that they would give me all the support that I needed and that I could be me on the platform. That I didn’t have to change. And I said, well, occasionally I’m going to have to criticize the person who owns this platform, and they said, ‘Absolutely, of course, he will like that.’ So as I was preparing for the interview, I wanted to just have people get to know him. I read Zoë Schiffer’s book [Extremely Hardcore] in preparation. I did a lot of research about him. I looked over a lot of what he put out on social media, and I just came up with questions, and that was it. It wasn’t a gotcha interview, it was just a straightforward interview, and I thought that he would appreciate it.

As the interview went on, you could tell he was getting a little increasingly frustrated with the questions, culminating in the last five minutes with him reminding you repeatedly that you only have five minutes left and three minutes left.

I hear that’s a tactic. I’ve heard he’s done that with other interviewers, but whatever.

Did you have a sense at the end of the interview that he was upset?

Yes, of course I did.

But he didn’t say anything?

He didn’t. I mean, it was almost a walk off. It kind of was like, ‘Okay, I gotta go.’ Look, it’s okay. Aidan, I have nothing against Elon Musk. I had no agenda except for people to get to know about him, to get to know about me, and maybe to get to learn something about themselves. I thought I was doing what he wanted on the platform. He said he wanted different voices, that he thought that the people he had on the platform, i.e. Tucker Carlson, he thought they were right, and he wanted a voice to counter that. He thought I was left, we talked about that in the interview, and I was like, ‘Why do you think I’m left?’ and I asked him if he had seen me on television, and he goes, ‘Yeah, I’ve seen clips.’ That’s the problem with most people who are my critics or detractors. They’ve never seen me on CNN. So they’ve seen me as a caricature of myself and with people who have an agenda and there’s no context there.

That reminds me. You wrote about your media diet for Puck recently, which included Ben Shapiro and Patrick Bet-David, who’s a conservative commentator on YouTube. Do you think that you are more conservative in your politics than most people assume?

Yes, I do. But also, I listen to people who I don’t agree with. I don’t have to agree with you to find you interesting. I don’t agree with my mom all the time, and she and my fiancee are the two people I love most in the world, and my sister, and I don’t agree with them all. You know, my mom and I had a disagreement the other night. My sister and I had a disagreement the other night, but the next morning we were planning the next time we’re going to see each other. I think it’s also a byproduct if you will of being in cable news where you have these intense conversations with people and then you end up going to have a beer with them after the show. I do think my politics are probably more centrist and even sometimes right, more right than people would assume. Do I have left-leaning politics sometimes or stances on issues? Yeah, I do, but I also have some things where I agree with with folks on the right. I always agree with the truth and facts, though, and lately in this atmosphere and this world, it has for the most part been the right-wing, the extremists, and the MAGA people in the Republican Party that are fact averse.

Trump changed a lot of things in that sense.

He did. Nothing matters. And you just put a lot of things out there, and you have so much chaos going on, and then nothing really matters. And then you undermine institutions like the press and the Justice Department and democracy. Because none of it matters and you can do what you want, so facts don’t matter and people believe what they want to believe and everyone’s in their own silos.

I have a little theory about Elon Musk and why he seemed a little unprepared for the questions that you asked him in that interview. Part of being on Twitter, especially if you’re only engaging with accounts that agree with you, is that you get trapped in an algorithmic silo where your viewpoints are affirmed constantly–

Give me a high five. Have you been listening to me?

I have not. Have you been saying this?

I had this epiphany on the airplane coming back [from Austin], because I was trying to figure out why he was so upset. It’s because he says he wants different points of view on his platform. People say that, but then when they hear it, it’s so foreign to them because they are in echo chambers all the time. Especially now on the right where facts don’t matter, and so when they actually hear someone speaking facts, they’ll say, ‘You’re a leftie!’ or ‘You’re against Elon Musk!’ and it’s like, no, I’m just challenging you on the truth. And then you’ll reference a study in the interview, and they’ll go, ‘Oh a study, a study!’ and you’re like, well, yeah, that’s better than just anecdotes or hypotheticals.

It reminded me of Linda Yaccarino, when she first got the job at X as CEO. She was at Code and she was getting mild questions from a reporter, and she really couldn’t handle them. I was thinking, she clearly engages with accounts on Twitter that agree with her and that say she’s doing a great job, and so she’s just not exposed at all to the criticism that we’re reading on the platform about the way X is being run.

I found it very telling when Elon Musk tweeted that I was doing the same thing that I did on CNN. That’s why he hired me.

Hiring a former CNN host and then getting upset that they are a former CNN host. And not Tucker Carlson.

Very good. That’s a great example because there’s another former cable news anchor on this platform who’s doing exactly what he did on Fox News. But he’s not complaining about that. So there you go.

You found out that the deal was off because your agent Jay Sures got a text from Elon Musk. I heard that there were some other words in there, maybe some expletives?

Yeah. It was very impulsive. ‘I’m really upset with you, I don’t like you, and therefore I’m gonna cancel your contract.’

And then Linda Yaccarino called you?

Yes. I was on a plane, I think she was on a plane as well, and my agent called, we had just landed at Newark, we’re taxiing, and the phone rang and I answered, and he said, ‘I need you to go step out of whatever you’re doing.’ I said, ‘I can’t, I’m taxiing.’ And then he told me and that was it. But very quickly I was just like, okay, good.

It’s a little surprising that the CEO of the company did not know about this, especially given how much she worked on bringing you over to the platform.

So you know who’s running the company.

Right. How much was Elon Musk going to pay you for the show?

[Laughs] Wouldn’t you like to know, Aidan? Too bad. I don’t discuss money publicly.

Have you heard from him since all of this happened in the last couple of days?

No, I have not heard from him. We used to text occasionally, not a lot.

Now I assume it’s the lawyers working it out?

No, there’s no lawyers working on anything. I am under the assumption that we had a deal and they have to abide by the terms of the deal. If they don’t do that within the the limits of the contract, then we’ll be forced to take legal action.

Okay, so that hasn’t started yet. That’s assuming he tries to wiggle out of this.

We’ll see. But again, I don’t like to talk about money or terms. I just find it gauche. It’s just not done. That’s the reason I have an agent.

Have you been reading the New York Post?

No, I don’t read the New York Post. Oh, I do read the New York Post. I lied. I read the horoscopes in the New York Post.

Are they good?

They’re great.

The New York Post has been reporting some stuff, based on sources clearly on the Musk side of things, that you made a bunch of requests from X. That you asked for a Cybertruck, an $8 million annual salary, all this stuff.

Oh come on. That is nonsense. People negotiate all the time, but that’s, come on. It’s obviously a deflection. Because it has nothing to do with the interview, and I’m not going to fall into that. I don’t read the New York Post, but I do love their horoscopes. It’s great. I’m a Pisces, by the way, so you can read my horoscope to know what’s going on in my life.

I’ll check out the Post horoscopes. For Pisces. By the way, in that Puck write up, when you were talking about the shows that you listened to, you mentioned that you listen to Adam Friedland’s podcast.

I do, he’s funny.

That’s an affliction we both share. Did you ever watch his Chris Cuomo interview?

I did not.

What happened to you guys? You used to do the handoffs on CNN.

Wasn’t that great? Yeah, I miss that.

You are not friends anymore? You’re not talking?

It’s not that we’re not friends. I just haven’t spoken to him. We needed a little break, but I love Chris. I love Chris, I love his family, very close to his family, but we have not spoken, no.

What was it like going back to CNN? You were on with Erin Burnett last week to talk about the implosion of the Musk deal. What was that like?

Aidan, you couldn’t write that shit. Come on, let’s be honest about that.

A very short window between leaving the network and coming back on. Usually it takes a little longer.

I swear to you. I was like, I can’t believe this is happening. Can you imagine the week that I had? I go to interview Elon Musk, I had this deal with him, many people, many of my fans, people who love me for a long time are like, ‘Why are you doing this? It’s so toxic. Do you see the stuff he puts out into the universe?’ Then I go to interview him, which is a very big interview. Look, it’s all me, it’s my production company, so I’m like, what do the lights look like, the setup, everything. Plus, I had to get in front of the camera to perform. So it was all that going on. And then he says deal off or deal canceled, and then all of a sudden I end up back in my same studio.

Emotional roller coaster.

Yeah, but it was just a lot. In my same studio that I shared with Erin Burnett with the same crew, and then everyone is coming into the building from all over, people who are still there, from photographers to sound people to lighting people, the people in the control room, my old team, it was a lot. But I was sitting there as the music was going up in the open to Erin’s show, and I said, ‘I’m dreaming. This is not happening. I’m going to wake up,’ because you couldn’t even write this for a Succession, an HBO show or whatever. But it was real. It was real. It was a little emotional. Not that I missed being there. I missed the people and I was overwhelmed by just the the reception that I got, and I realized how much I love working with those people. They’re great journalists, are great professionals, but many of them are really my dear friends.

When you reflect back on what happened at CNN, how do you feel about that now? Are you disappointed about the way it went down?

I don’t really. Honestly, I don’t really think about CNN that much. I don’t watch. This is the first time I probably have seen [gestures at monitors in our studio] you have Fox News on in here and there’s CNN behind. I saw Brianna Keilar and I’m like, ‘What is she doing right now?’ Like I have no idea of what is happening.

Just podcasts then now?

No, look, if something big happens in the world, I’ll turn on cable news or television. But I can be informed without being inundated, and so I feel actually now more informed as a citizen than I was when I was in cable news because my diet is much larger. Because one can’t help but be drawn into what they’re doing. So I was kind of in a silo because every day I had to be concerned about what was on my show, what the network was doing, what’s happening politically, because it was a lot of political stuff. So I was very focused on that. But now my diet is bigger. I can watch or listen to conservative shows, or listen to conservative podcasts, or everyday listen to The Daily as I’m getting dressed or walking the dogs, or Pod Save America or Ben Shapiro. The reason I started listening to Ben Shapiro, you asked about that, was when the war happened, and I said I want to hear what Ben has to say about this. And the first day, his first day back, performance isn’t the right word, but the passion that he had in reporting what was happening was so authentic and so palpable that you couldn’t help to be drawn into it. Now, listen, politically, I don’t agree with Ben Shapiro on a lot of things, but he’s very talented and he’s very passionate about Israel, and one can’t help but listen to that, whether you agree with it or not.

Chris Licht, soon after you left, was fired by the network. What did you think of that at the time? Did you feel vindicated a little bit?

Again, I haven’t thought — God, I haven’t thought about Chris Licht in forever. But I’ll tell you about that day. It was weird because when I stopped working for CNN I was on such a crazy schedule. I had the night shift and so I would wake up late, and then I had the morning shift where I would wake up early, but I had this really incredible sleep and I woke up late, and I woke up and I seriously had about 100 text messages from people, and I’m not exaggerating. ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!’ And I was like, what happened? Someone called me as soon as I woke up and before I could read and they said, ‘Oh my God, can you believe this?’ And I said, ‘No, I can’t believe it.’ But honestly, look, I don’t take glee in anyone’s demise. What was important to me was the people at my old network, if they were going to be okay, because they are the most talented journalists, I think, in the world. And so whatever the outcome was with Chris or whatever, I was hoping for the best for them because I love them and I’m rooting for them and I want them to succeed. That’s it.

Your situation was in part borne out of Licht’s effort to make CNN quieter, with less commentary on the air, more straight newsreading. It seemed to be that was the thinking behind a lot of the changes at CNN under Chris Licht. What did you think of that strategy? Do you think that was smart or a foolish strategy for a cable news network?

I don’t know what their strategy is because I haven’t seen it. I’m not a news executive. I can tell you about cable news because I worked in cable news and I worked in broadcast news for a long time, so this is not specific to CNN. I think if you were going to do television, which is about personalities and people, people tune in for people, then you have to be authentic and you have to give people people, and it has to be someone with a personality. There’s a reason that Fox News is successful at night. It’s because they have big personality, big stars who give you points of view and give you windows into their lives and their thinking. There’s a reason that Rachel Maddow is successful. There’s a reason that Ari Melber is successful. It’s because they’re authentic, they’re different, and you want to know about them. They draw you in. If you don’t have someone who draws you in in front of a camera, then no one is going to watch. So again, I’m not saying that specifically about CNN, but just overall my take on television after having done television for my entire adult career, I think that’s a pretty astute assessment of what it takes to be successful.

I mean, look at look at Chris Cuomo and I. People hung on every word because it was real and because we really liked each other and our lives were being — a big part of our lives, or at least a part of our lives, was being shared every night on a small screen and people related to it. It was relatable. They want authenticity and they want relatable people.

That’s a big problem for all these networks now, because they increasingly don’t have the money to afford big personalities, but they also need personalities because that’s where the media industry is headed now.

Yeah. If I want no personality, I’ll read a newspaper.

I want to talk about your new media venture, The Don Lemon Show. Is the idea to build a broader media company around you as a personality in the same way that some people, like Megyn Kelly, have done so?

The idea first is to have fun, and to experiment.

Are you having fun?

I am having fun.

And to experiment and to broaden my horizons, so to speak. And right now, I am very fortunate that I have an opportunity in this moment to experiment for a while and to see what’s out there and to lean into where I believe, and most people believe, the business is going, and that’s towards streaming. So yes, the idea is to build something around me and use whatever cachet I have in the business or as a personality that I have gained over the years in the decades that I’ve been on television and use that and turn it into a business and a production company, starting first with The Don Lemon Show and then branching out to other talent, hopefully, and bringing them along and teaching them how to make this transition. Because I think eventually, sooner than later, everyone who’s on those boxes that we’re looking at now, they’re going to have to do the same thing.

Have you looked at what Tucker Carlson is doing? Regardless of what you think of his opinions, he’s had success in the digital media space.

Of course. I don’t spend a lot of time like watching every single show, but yes, I’m aware of what Tucker’s doing. I’ve looked at some of this stuff. I’ve even spoken to Tucker.

Since leaving CNN?

Yeah, of course. Of course.

What was that like? Given what he said about you on air.

I don’t take anything personally, and so when he would say things about me, most of the time I did not see it or hear it. He’ll say, ‘Oh my God, I can’t help but like Don Lemon, I can’t help but like him, but he’s the dumbest person’ or whatever. And it’s like, okay, Tucker, whatever. That doesn’t really penetrate. I’m sure some people take offense to it. I don’t believe in most of what Tucker believes in. I find much of what he says reprehensible at times. But if someone calls or if someone extends an olive branch, I’ll see what they have to say, and there’s nothing wrong with, well, ‘We got let go of our jobs on the same day. How weird is that?’ Or, ‘I heard you’re thinking about coming to X. If you do, you know–‘

Did he say it was a good idea to come to X?

He said that it was. I think he’s happy to be off of cable news, and he’s said that publicly.

It’s certainly working for him. Elon Musk promotes his episodes.

That’s what the whole idea was: amplification. He’s getting amplification over there, right? So as much as they say that they can suppress hate speech, there are other things I’m sure that they could do with Tucker, and there are ways to amplify your work. And so that was the idea for me, was to amplify my work and spread my voice and my work across the platform, which would eventually spread across wherever X is, which is all over the world.

Do you plan on the show being hard news, more of a talk show, or a mix of both?

A mix of both. This is a presidential election year, and so you can’t help but discuss politics because it’s very heavy in the zeitgeist. But we’re talking about having other influencers or creators on the show. We’re discussing what are we going to do about TikTok. I’ve been wanting to do shows on Ozempic and weight loss drugs for a long time, and Oprah did it, and it was like, good for Oprah, she did it. Again, Oprah’s success is being authentic, because who would have thought when– especially when I grew up, you weren’t even born when — I grew up watching television in the 70s. So you weren’t even born. But no one thought then that there would be an African-American woman who is overweight, and I’m not saying that in a bad way because that’s what her special was the other night, who was the number one television personality in the world. And she became that for just by being herself, authentic, regardless of what weight, what size she was. I applaud her for doing that. We were considering doing something on that. I’ve been wanting to do it since I was working at CNN because there’s such a stigma with that, but the way you lose weight changes over time. You know, it used to just be people would sit around and they would say, okay, I can’t eat. I got to starve myself. But the drugs now that are causing people to lose weight have been around for a long time. They’re diabetes drugs for the most part, and so they’ve been tested, and I think the benefits of those outweigh the heart disease, the back pain, the pressure on your joints and all of those things. Your heart, all of that stuff. And so I think that people should be a little bit more open minded about that, so I’m glad she’s doing it. I’ve been wanting to do that for a while. So we’re going to talk about all those things.

And it will be more investigations or interviews?

Look, it can be whatever I want it to be. That’s the beauty. But also that’s the scary part as wel.

Would you ever consider going back to an institution? If MSNBC comes knocking tomorrow and says, ‘Don, we want you to host a show on our network,’ would you do that?

It depends on the terms. Do I want to be wedded to a show five days a week? I don’t know if I want to do that. Initially I thought, I’m five days a week, I was five days a week, two hours, that’s what I was set for. And I didn’t realize I was killing myself.

That’s exhausting.

It’s exhausting and I didn’t realize it. You know, when I left CNN, Tim was like, ‘How much are you going to sleep?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know, probably 17 years because I didn’t get any sleep.’ I’m sure a little bit of it was depression, right, which I’m going to write about in a book that I have coming out. But you were asking me about MSNBC or other networks. If another network called, it would depend on the terms, but I would not want to, I don’t think I would want to do something every single day. But maybe. It depends on the terms, and if it’s a great offer, I might go back, but I would still like to continue to do The Don Lemon Show in some form or fashion if that were to happen.

Would you ever go back to CNN?

Look, I would never say never. Most of the people who were involved in my ousting are gone and so it’s kind of like the place that it was before I got there. That would be interesting.

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