Elon Musk Didn’t Tell His Own CEO He Nixed The Multi-Million Dollar Don Lemon Deal

Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of Elon Musk-owned X, has long been dogged by questions of who is really in charge of the company, a dynamic that was highlighted this week as Yaccarino was apparently left out of the loop when Musk canceled X’s deal with Don Lemon.

Lemon, the former CNN host, spoke to Mediaite’s Aidan McLaughlin in a tell-all interview out Wednesday about his contentious interview with Musk that led to the abrupt cancelation of his deal to bring a show to X.

Lemon pointed to Musk’s explanation, after news of the breakdown of the deal was public, that he called off the agreement because Lemon conducted the interview as he would have on CNN, his former employer. He noted Musk has not complained that Tucker Carlson is doing the same kind of work he did at Fox News.

“[Carlson is] 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,” Lemon replied, arguing Musk shouldn’t have been surprised Lemon asked him real questions. McLaughlin and Lemon then discussed exactly how Lemon found out his contract was canceled:

McLaughin: 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?

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

McLaughin: 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.

McLaughin: 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.

Lemon: So you know who’s running the company.

Lemon also spoke to Pivot’s Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway on Yaccarino being in the dark. Galloway asked directly, “Did the CEO know?”

Lemon replied, “No. The CEO got a text from Elon. She never — she had not, when I spoke to her, she had not spoken to him. She called me to say, you know, to try to smooth it over and to find out what happened. And, ‘I just want to know what was going on because, you know, I haven’t even spoken to him, and I’m waiting to get in touch with him and what have you.’ But I think it took a while for her to get in touch with him.”

Watch the clip above via Mediaite.

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