THE HILL
Don Lemon’s former CNN co-anchors early Tuesday addressed his sudden firing from the network one day earlier, sharing news of his departure with the outlet’s audience and praising his nearly 20-year career at the cable news giant.
“We begin with some news about this show,” anchor Poppy Harlow said as “CNN This Morning,” opened. “As you may have heard yesterday, CNN parted ways with Don Lemon.”
Lemon was fired amid a slew of negative headlines and controversies that have embroiled the longtime television news personality over the past several months.
In a statement, which Harlow read on the air, CNN president Chris Licht said, “Don will forever be a part of the CNN family.”
“Don was a big part of this show for the past six months,” co-host Kaitlan Collins said. “He was one of the first anchors on CNN to ever have me on his show. That’s something I’ll obviously never forget. I agree with Chris, we wish him the best.”
Harlow also noted her friendship with Lemon and said she and Collins are proud of the work that has gone into the network’s revamped morning program, which has been on the air for less than seven months and has so far failed to break through in the ratings in the ultra-competitive morning news show landscape.
Lemon’s firing comes just weeks after he had been briefly pulled off the air for comments about Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, saying she was “not in her prime,” remarks that were widely panned as sexist and landed him in sensitivity training.
More recently, a report surfaced in popular culture magazine “Variety” outlining an alleged history of Lemon’s abuse of his female coworkers and staff, which he — through CNN’s spokespeople — denied…
